Climate change impacts human health as well as health systems. It acts as an amplifier, exacerbating pre-existing health conditions and increasing the spread of infectious diseases and further straining overburdened health systems. Crown Agents’ work on the climate-health nexus provides action-oriented solutions that span both adaptation and mitigation strategies, supporting countries on the route to resilient and sustainable low carbon health systems. Crown Agents is a member of the WHO-led Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health and is an active contributor to the global response to climate change.
Crown Agents applies a planetary health lens and ‘whole-systems’ approach to ensuring countries proactively anticipate and effectively respond to potential future threats such as pandemics or zoonotic diseases. Our collaborative strategies support countries to take an equity-focussed and inclusive approach – ensuring citizen voice and accountability –particularly of marginalised and indigenous communities.
We support governments in their response to the climate crisis, specifically in their efforts to achieve their COP26 health commitments. We take a cross-cutting approach to programming which enables us to embed the climate perspective across all upcoming health programmes.
Our workstream focusing on resilient and climate-smart health infrastructure includes health facility electrification (HFE)/solarisation, resilient WASH infrastructure and sustainable healthcare waste management. Crown Agents has designed an innovative blended finance model for the electrification of healthcare facilities. It has been developed to overcome the failure of energy markets in Sub-Saharan Africa to mitigate risks associated with government capacity to finance the electrification of public health facilities. This model is currently being piloted in Sierra Leone under funding from The Fund for Innovation in Development.
As a key global player in health supply chains, Crown Agents also has important leverage that we are utilising to contribute to efforts to decarbonise health supply chains through sustainable procurement practices, incorporating decarbonisation strategies and through promoting a circular economy for healthcare.