The Relationship Between Climate Change, Globalization And Non-Communicable Diseases In Africa: A Systematic Review
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Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PLOS ONE
Abstract
Climate change and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are considered the 21st Century’s
major health and development challenges. Both pose a disproportionate burden on low- and
middle-income countries that are unprepared to cope with their synergistic effects. These
two challenges pose risks for achieving many of the sustainable development goals (SDGs)
and are both impacted by globalization through different pathways. While there are important insights on how climate change and or globalization impact NCDs in the general literature, comprehensive research that explores the influence of climate change and or
globalization on NCDs is limited, particularly in the context of Africa. This review documents
the pathways through which climate change and or globalization influence NCDs in Africa.
We conducted a comprehensive literature search in eight electronic databases—Web of
Science, PubMed, Scopus, Global Health Library, Science Direct, Medline, ProQuest, and
Google Scholar. A total of 13864 studies were identified. Studies that were identified from
more than one of the databases was automatically removed as a duplicate (n = 9649). Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA),
guidelines, a total of 27 studies were eventually included in the final review. We found that
the impacts of climate change and or globalization on NCDs act through three potential pathways: reduction in food production and nutrition, urbanization and transformation of food
systems. Our review contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into the
impact of climate change and or globalization on human health. We believe that our findings
will help enlighten policy makers working on these pathways to facilitate the development of
effective policy and public health interventions to mitigate the effects of climate change and
globalization on the rising burden of NCDs and goal 3 of the SDG, in particular.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
climate change, globalization, non-communicable diseases