Five ways to prepare for the impending El Niño

Research led by Ruby Lieber and Dann Mitchell, published in The Lancet, has identified five key ways countries across the globe can be better prepared for the impending El Niño, and reduce its potentially devastating toll on human health.

The points are:

1. The United Nations, and other international bodies, must address the urgent need to protect health and prevent disease when El Niño is officially declared.
2. National governments should be supported to assess the effects of El Niño on population health and to implement necessary precautions, including early-warning systems.
3. Scale up El Niño-focused climate-health attribution studies and use the findings to inform and shape policy and practice.
4. Continuously review the health effects of El Niño to gain a comprehensive picture of its evolving impact and help identify and address any evidence gaps.
5. Assess the cost-effectiveness of climate-health measures taken, such as early warning systems, bolstering health system capacity, urban flood protection and food system resilience actions.

Ruby said: “We know the number of people affected by climate-related disasters is strongly influenced by the El Niño cycle, but there is little evidence available establishing how much of the health burden can be attributed to climate change and how much was driven by El Niño. Since the current El Niño pushes many regions into more extreme climates, there’s a pressing and unprecedented need to better understand, measure and pinpoint the different dangers for individual countries and places.”

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