DUBAI, Dec 3 (Reuters): The United Arab Emirates and several charities at the U.N. climate summit on Sunday offered $777 million in financing for eradicating neglected tropical diseases that are expected to worsen as temperatures climb.
Climate-related factors "have become one of the greatest threats to human health in the 21st century", COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber said in a statement.
The pledges, made as the COP28 summit on Sunday focused on climate-related health risks, included $100 million from the UAE and another $100 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Others to announce funds for climate-related health issues included Belgium, Germany and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The World Bank launched a program to explore possible support measures for public health in developing countries, where climate-related health risks are especially high.
The burden of tropical diseases will worsen as the world warms, along with other climate-driven health threats including malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
Many tropical diseases are already easy to treat. River blindness and sleeping sickness, for example, are both endemic to Africa and spread through parasitic worms and flies that are likely to proliferate in a warming world.
More than 120 countries have signed a COP28 declaration acknowledging their responsibility to keep people safe amid global warming.
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