Health care system resilience for climate change and pandemics | McKinsey

The world has had a rude awakening when it comes to the vulnerability of its health systems. Infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and the impacts of climate change have strained health systems across the globe and demonstrated how unprepared the world is to respond to these growing threats. Climate disasters are increasingly and painfully commonplace. From 2018 to 2022, the United States alone experienced 18 weather and climate disasters that cost at least $1 billion each.1 In the first ten months of 2023, there were 25 such events.2 Climate impacts are also expected to worsen globally: from 2030 to 2050, an additional 250,000 global deaths related to climate change are expected per year.3 And unfortunately, COVID-19 wasn’t the last pandemic.4 Just as these two threats are, in many ways, intertwined (for example, a warming planet is exacerbating zoonotic threats), so are their solutions. Health system climate adaptation and pandemic preparedness and response can help health systems res

The world has had a rude awakening when it comes to the vulnerability of its health systems. Infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and the impacts of climate change have strained health systems across the globe and demonstrated how unprepared the world is to respond to these growing threats. Climate disasters are increasingly and painfully commonplace. From 2018 to 2022, the United States alone experienced 18 weather and climate disasters that cost at least $1 billion each.1 In the first ten months of 2023, there were 25 such events.2 Climate impacts are also expected to worsen globally: from 2