Climate Change, Conflict, and Contagion: Emerging Threats to Global Public Health

Abstract

The present era is defined by a confluence of crises and a degree of global interconnectedness without historic precedent. A Toxic Triumvirate of climate change, conflict, and contagion have synergistically functioned to cast our collective, global public health into extreme jeopardy. The COVID-19 pandemic, War in Ukraine, and advancing climactic catastrophe have devastated our world: destabilizing nations, severing vital supply lines, and fracturing indispensable health infrastructure. All the while, the threat of nuclear war and the risk of devastating pandemic from emerging infectious disease (EID) grow in the unchecked wounds of low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Nations of the Global South have been rendered super-vulnerable to the Toxic Triumvirate’s effects through historic global inequity and chronically anemic international support. These “developing” nations are subject to unsustainable extremes of risk secondary to a compounding of hazard. This amplified risk is transmitted through our world via vibrant arteries of commerce that intimately connect us. Our world’s collective health is in a state of jeopardy demanding a vigorous, equitable, and cooperative international response. To chart a course toward a safe future for our children, we must rectify the profound inequities that present our world’s shared Achilles’ heel and invest in the sustainable development of LMIC.