Seed hosts inaugural stakeholder meeting on climate and health vulnerability assessment
Seed Global Health (Seed) Malawi held an inaugural stakeholder’s meeting to scope and frame the climate change and health rapid vulnerability and adaptation assessment process from 4th to 5th March 2025. The event which was attended by NGOs, members of Malawi Health and Climate Change Core Team, government health related agencies representatives, and the academia among others took place at Sigerege Resort, Salima.
This follows a recently announced Seed partnership with Rockefeller Foundation on a grant that’s supporting the country to develop a cost effective and accessible vulnerability and adaptation assessment (VAA) toolkit. The toolkit can be used immediately, to articulately assess climate change readiness as it pertains to Malawi’s health system.
Malawi is one of the countries that has experienced devastating consequences of climate change on human health and the environment. Over the years, tropical cyclones have killed many Malawians, destroyed countless properties, farms and infrastructure. The most recent was Cyclone Freddy in 2023 which caused a surge in cholera cases, affecting over 2.2 million people and placing unprecedented strain on Malawi’s healthcare system. It is such occurrences that have made climate resilience planning more urgent for the country. While WHO developed a vulnerability and adaptation assessment to help countries include climate-smart actions in their health plans, its implementation requires an investment and skilled people that many low and middle-income countries don’t have.
Speaking at the meeting, the chief guest, Deputy Director for Preventive Health Services at the Ministry of Health, Ms Flora Dimba, highlighted the importance of the assessment urging the consultants to do their work diligently as the findings will inform the development of the Health National Adaptation Plan (HNAP). “As a ministry, we are so excited about this partnership. We began the process of developing our HNAP a long time ago and it’s sad that we have not realised this mainly due to financial constraints. Now that the funds available, we are urge the consultants to do the assessment diligently with the hope of having the results before the end of this year”.
At the end of the two-day meeting, the participants had developed an assessment scope, a work plan and communication plan, and selected the Research Advisory Committee.
Prior to this engagement, the Malawi Minister of Health, Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, applauded the support from Rockerfeller Foundation and Seed in a statement published by the Malawi National Broadcasting corporation. She emphasized the urgent need for climate-resilient health systems, noting the severe consequences of climate change on public health.
Seed’s Country Director, Anda Nyondo was optimistic that VAA toolkit will help the resource constrained countries like Malawi and others in sub-Saharan Africa to rapidly generate actionable data for the health systems planning. She called on the participants to deeply engage in the meeting, own the process and ultimately the assessment.
The development of the VAA toolkit is a notable addition to the long-standing partnership between Seed and the Ministry of Health, aimed at strengthening the future health workforce. This collaboration focuses on training highly skilled family medicine doctors, midwives, and nurses who are equipped to deliver compassionate, high-quality care and train others to do the same.
