The global challenge of mitigating the impacts of climate change risks is a global priority for saving lives and ensuring the sustainability of national development. Facing the challenges of climate change, which directly impact public health, requires concrete and structured efforts from the grassroots level. To achieve increased resilience to the impacts of climate change at the community level, all stakeholders need to play an active role. This active role in addressing climate change must be transformed into collaborative stakeholder activities with a more strategic approach. The health sector strives to implement this through the Climate-Resilient Healthy Village/Sub-district (DEKSI) program, a community-based effort to reduce the risk of climate-sensitive diseases (dengue, malaria, acute respiratory infection (ARI) (pneumonia), and diarrhea).
These Climate-Resilient Healthy Village/Sub-district (DEKSI) guidelines are designed as a reference for the government, health workers, communities, and various stakeholders in integrating climate resilience principles into the health sector at the community level. These guidelines incorporate a participatory approach for identifying climate risks impacting health and formulating adaptation actions appropriate to the local context. The goal is to strengthen the capacity and resilience of villages/sub-districts in protecting public health from the impacts of climate change.
Through the implementation of these guidelines, it is hoped that villages/sub-districts will be created that are not only resilient to climate change but also sustainable, healthy, and inclusive. These guidelines are part of the Ministry of Health's commitment to supporting health development efforts that adapt to climate change to achieve a Climate-Resilient Health System and the highest possible level of public health.
Climate change has become one of the greatest challenges to sustainable development, particularly in public health. Rising global temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters are impacting the incidence of climate-sensitive diseases, health care systems, and vulnerable groups such as women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and low-income communities. Without urgent action, climate change will continue to endanger the health of current and future generations and further strain the health care system.
To address these threats, climate change adaptation actions in the health sector are necessary. However, determining appropriate actions cannot be done without a strong, evidence-based basis. Therefore, a crucial initial step is to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of climate change in the health sector, the results of which are presented in this book. The vulnerability analysis was conducted at three levels: provincial, regency/city, and village/sub-district. The levels of vulnerability and exposure of provinces, regencies/cities, and villages/sub-districts were categorized into five levels (very high, high, moderate, low, and very low), with varying distributions. The analysis elaborates on climate data, climate-sensitive disease incidence, disaster events, environmental media quality, geography, population, vulnerable groups, socioeconomics, community behavior, health service facilities, and health workers.
Therefore, with this book, it is hoped that local governments, health workers, academics, NGOs, and development partners will have a more comprehensive understanding in assessing climate vulnerability and risk, and developing integrated and contextual health adaptation measures.