Geneva – Unitaid joins partners to observe World Health Day 2022 today, reaffirming its strong commitment to contribute to keep humans and the planet healthy.
Climate change has been identified as the single biggest health threat of the 21st century, already harming the world’s most vulnerable people and menacing to undermine decades of progress in global health.
Global warming multiplies the risk of floods, storms, drought and heat waves worldwide, driving non-communicable and infectious diseases, including mosquito-borne diseases. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change may put two billion more people at risk of dengue infection and cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050, mainly from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
Unitaid’s role is to enable access to lifesaving health products for those who need them most, fast-tracking the innovations needed to make a transformative impact on global health. In addition to contributing to the response to climate change impacts on global health – mainly targeting infectious diseases and cross-cutting areas such as fever management and maternal and child health – Unitaid is helping address the causes of rising temperatures with carbon emissions-cutting efforts.
In line with the Paris Agreement goals, Unitaid has committed to halve the carbon emissions of its Secretariat by 2030 and offset its carbon footprint to effectively achieve net-zero emissions from 2022.
Unitaid’s Climate Action Roadmap, launched during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) at the end of 2021, maps out the way forward to achieve these targets, by decarbonizing its procurements, reducing the footprint of its business travels, raising awareness of its staff and neutralizing its remaining footprint from 2022 onwards by purchasing independently verified carbon credits. The use of carbon offset will be limited and strictly positioned as a transition tool to internalize the cost of carbon while contributing to the financing of the global net-zero transition.
Unitaid is also working hand in hand with its grant implementers and other partners to identify sustainable low carbon strategies and opportunities to establish and embed greener grant management modalities in its operating model.
Preventing greenhouse gas emission in reducing the carbon emissions of its investments and of the health innovations it supports are priorities reflected in Unitaid’s upcoming 2022-2026 strategy.
Unitaid is strongly committed to ensuring equitable access to quality health products while contributing to an environmentally responsible and sustainable global health response.
World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April each year and marks the anniversary of the founding of WHO in 1948.
#HealthierTomorrow
Media contact:
For more information and media requests:
Sarah Mascheroni
Communications officer
Email: mascheronisa@unitaid.who.int
Mobile: +41 79 728 73 11