The climate emergency could be the ultimate health opportunity, says WHO’s Maria Neira

Maria Neira wanted to be a diabetologist—that was until she went to work with Médecins Sans Frontières in El Salvador and Honduras, treating people displaced to refugee camps during the armed conflict.“That’s when I discovered public health and changed completely from the curative to the preventative. I wanted more impact from my interventions,” she says. “I then did a masters in public health—but I really learnt about it in the refugee camps, not at university.”Neira later spent five years working in eastern Africa, as a public health adviser to the Mozambique Ministry of Health and as a UN public health adviser in Kigali, Rwanda. And for nearly two decades she has headed up WHO’s department of environment, climate change, and health.Over that time, she says there have been advancements—including in how public health officers consider climate as part of their work and the development of international air quality guidelines—but never…
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