1. Climate and Health: from research to policy and practice Madeleine C. Thomson, International Research Institute for Climate and Society PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre on early warning systems for malaria and other climate sensitive diseases Bamako 17 th -19 th November 2008

2. How does climate impact on health?

3. Climate and health: two agendas? RBM - MDGs 2000 Malaria Prevention and Control, Elimination and now Eradication IPPC 4 th Report 2007 Climate Change Mitigation And now Adaptation

4. Decadal Variability 27 % Year to year variability 56% Climate changes on all timescales Long term trends 18% Sahel 1900-2006

5. Rainfall in the Sahel 1900-2006 – (Giannini pers. comm) OCP

6. Areas and seasons where the seasonal rainfall is strongly controlled by sea surface temperatures and therefore potentially predictable Botswana Anon, is the climate right, IRI, 2005

7. These results used at in SA Regional Epidemic Malaria Outlook Forum, Harare, 2004- 2008 Improving epidemic malaria planning, preparedness and response in Southern Africa. (DaSilva, et al. 2004) http://www.malariajournal.com/content/3/1/37

8. Long term trend: 18% Variance Inter-decadal variability: 27% Variance Inter-annual variability: 55% Variance ??? ???? El Nino Climate Change models

9. Bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization, October 2008 Climate For Development in Africa.

10. Creating a Climate Smart health sector

11. Key messages New Research needed to Understand climate and health interactions on relevant policy and decision timescales Understand the predictability of climate and health outcomes on relevant policy and decision timescales Operationalisation of current research Create partnerships between the climate and health operational research community Create an operational meteorological community capable of responding to health/development needs Implementation of current operational research Create a climate smart health community capable of using climate information to improve health outcomes today while learning about the potential risks for tomorrow.