“We’re seeking the impacts of climate change in the Pacific region,” Villagomez said at the opening of the five-day Pacific Island Health Officers Association meeting. “What happened in the Marshall Islands last month (high waves that inundated low-lying areas) happened to some extent in each of our countries.”
U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials are now in the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia assessing damage from storm surges that flooded many islands, damaging some homes and hurting food crops.
The Majuro health officers meeting is bringing together policy makers and service providers from American Samoa, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Guam and the Northern Marianas with officials from the U.S. Departments of Defense and Interior, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization to address a range of preventive health and policy concerns for the Pacific.
Getting U.S. government attention to climate change impacts in the health arena will be easier now that the Centers for Disease Control has established an office to specifically deal with this issue, said Dr. Mark Keim, the senior science advisor to CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health who will make a presentation on climate change to the meeting later this week.
Villagomez underlined the worry of Pacific islanders about climate change and even a modest rise in sea levels.
“Our land mass is not great so any change has a huge impact on us,” he said. Because health providers must deal with the impact of climate changes, “we need to galvanize governments to get involved (to plan for climate change). We have to put it at the forefront of our agenda.”
