SA launches first climate and health surveillance platform
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
South Africa has launched its first national climate and health surveillance platform, a pioneering research and decision-support tool designed to strengthen the country’s ability to understand and respond to the growing health impacts of climate change. The platform, available through the Climate Health Surveillance South Africa website, was conceptualised and developed by Professor Caradee Wright, with support from the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and the University of Pretoria. The launch comes as South Africa increasingly experiences the health effects of climate-related environmental conditions, from extreme heat and worsening air pollution to flooding, drought and climate-sensitive diseases. In recent years, research Wright and colleagues led has highlighted how prolonged heat exposure places outdoor workers, children, older people and low-income communities at increased risk of dehydration, heat stress, respiratory illness and other adverse health outcomes. The risks are expected to intensify as temperatures continue to rise. Against this backdrop, the platform was developed to help researchers, policymakers, public health practitioners and other stakeholders better visualise and interpret climate, environmental and health data in a single system. “The most important reason for producing this platform is to visualise our data,” Wright, the chief specialist scientist at the SAMRC, said. “It’s to show South Africa, Africa and the world that we have data, we have good data and we can look at our data. I’m really trying to encourage the sharing of data for visualisation so we can look at it and tell stories, find stories and show the use of investing money in collecting data.” She said the platform was also intended to demonstrate the value of the country’s health information systems and encourage broader data sharing. “For example, it would be wonderful if district health information system data could be electronic at the levels that we n