The impact of climate change on health is evident in every medical round. Long dry spells reduce access to safe drinking water, leading to dehydration, kidney pain, chronic headaches, and diarrhoeal disease. Undernutrition increases when crops fail, leading to stunted growth, frequent infections, and low weight-for-age.

When the rains finally arrive, they bring additional hazards. Floods and landslides obstruct routes to health centres, delay treatment, and contaminate wells with faecal matter. Stagnant water around homes becomes a breeding ground for Anopheles and Aedes mosquitoes, spreading malaria and dengue to new areas and prolonging transmission seasons. Overcrowded shelters following storms increase the risk of respiratory and skin infections.

These physical threats impose a heavy psychological burden. Families live in constant uncertainty, afraid of the next drought or flood, selling livestock or land to pay for healthcare. Mental health declines, even if it is rarely acknowledged. In this context, climate change does not create new diseases; it amplifies existing vulnerabilities and makes every illness more perilous for those who are already most at risk.

Our response to climate-related health issues is centred on Primary Medical Care. With Kawan Sehat health agents, supported by Fair Future and Kawan Baik Indonesia, we deliver care and knowledge directly to villages, even when roads are damaged or flooded. Health agents find alternative routes, crossing dry riverbeds or muddy tracks to reach isolated families.

During droughts, we focus on safe water use, early signs of dehydration, and practical advice on when to seek help. In periods of heavy rain, we protect food supplies, reduce mosquito breeding around homes, and manage fevers, wounds, and respiratory infections that follow floods. Our Water Connections projects provide reservoirs and networks that secure clean water, reducing diarrhoeal diseases and kidney complications.

In our clinics and mobile missions, we treat undernutrition, monitor high-risk patients, and connect medical care with hygiene, nutrition, and mental wellbeing. Training sessions in simple language explain how climate, water, insects, and disease interact. Our aim is to treat today’s illnesses while strengthening each community’s capacity to face the next climatic shock with more knowledge, more tools, and less fear.

Global evidence supports our field observations. The World Health Organisation predicts that climate change could result in approximately 250,000 additional deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 due to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, and heat stress. These are not isolated incidents but rather predictable consequences of the interaction between changing weather patterns and health systems.

Climate change poses a significant threat to the essential factors that determine health. Increasing temperatures and extreme weather events endanger clean air, safe drinking water, stable food supplies, and shelter. In addition, air pollution and polluted water currently result in millions of deaths annually, even without future climate developments taken into account. Emissions from burning fossil fuels contribute both to greenhouse gases driving the climate crisis and produce fine particles detrimental to respiratory and cardiovascular health.

The burden is unequally distributed. Populations in low and middle-income countries, which typically have fragile health infrastructures, possess the fewest resources for adaptation. Women, children, the elderly, migrants, and those with chronic illnesses are particularly vulnerable to climate-sensitive health risks. In regions such as rural Indonesia—where healthcare facilities are remote and water supplies limited—the impact of climate change on health becomes apparent well before it emerges in global statistics.