Climate change and health in Mozambique: Impacts on diarrheal disease and malaria

This report outlines the results of a scientific study of the impacts of weather, climate variability, and climate change on health in Mozambique, with a focus on diarrheal disease and malaria.

The principal objective of this work is to build a scientific knowledge base to support informed investments and decision making in the health sector in Mozambique. The findings will help to shape the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) preparedness and response to emerging climate risks by working in concert with Mozambique’s new National Climate and Health Observatory, which combines weather and climate data to predict disease outbreaks, raise awareness of weather and climate impacts on health, and encourage government and public discourse on climatesensitive health issues.

To achieve the purpose outlined above, the relationship between climate and climate-sensitive disease outbreaks was examined using existing weather, climate, and health data. A preliminary evaluation of the relative coverage and completeness of data on the climate-sensitive diseases tracked by the Boletins Epidemiológicos Semanais (BES) in Mozambique found that data on diarrheal disease and malaria offered sufficiently consistent national coverage and reporting rates to support the analysis. Furthermore, these are two of the most prevalent and devastating diseases in Mozambique, making it key to understand how weather, climate variability, and climate change impact their occurrence.