Climate and health vulnerability assessment for Ghana

This climate and health vulnerability assessment (CHVA) aims to assist decision-makers in Ghana with planning effective adaptation measures to deal with climate-related health risks. The report identifies the impact of climate risks on health and health systems, the adaptive capacities in place to deal with these risks, and the gaps in the adaptive capacities. It also provides recommendations to close the identified gaps. The report adopts the World Health Organization’s (WHO) operational framework for building climate-resilient health systems to analyze Ghana’s adaptive capacity to adequately deal with current and future identified health risks of climate change.

The publication provides the following recommendations to reduce climate-related health vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities of the health system: 

• Integrate climate-related impacts into health workforce planning;
• Institutionalize climate-related capacity building of the health workforce with buy-in from relevant regulators;
• Enhance the coverage of climate-sensitive health conditions in routine health information systems;
• Mainstreaming weather and disease forecasting.