Climate Change & Health Surveillance

In collaboration with its partners, the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) aims to develop an online surveillance platform that will showcase important data and key trends related to climate change, air quality and human health in South Africa. Such data will include key indicators on diarrhoeal diseases, respiratory conditions, heat-related illnesses, vector-borne diseases and injury patterns.

The primary purpose of the platform is tracking, visualising, and communicating key climate-health interactions across the country in near-real time. The overarching goal of this platform is to support early warning, risk communication, and public health decision making and response planning through the systematic monitoring of climate-sensitive health outcomes and climate-related hazards. Relevant health data is obtained with permission from the National Department of Health's District Health Information System (DHIS), and is aggregated and anonymised.

As an epidemiological tool, the surveillance dashboard generates and displays visualisations including time-series plots, maps, and trend analyses to understand the relationships and unusual changes or emerging risks between climate and health at sub-national levels, integrating health data with South African Weather Service (SAWS) alerts data on extreme weather events, obtained with permission, such as heatwaves, droughts and flooding, to identify spatiotemporal connections.