6 Challenges Threatening Global Health Security

Global health security involves safeguarding populations worldwide from health threats, whether stemming from natural causes or human activities. In our interconnected world, these challenges transcend borders and impact everyone. Here, we examine six major challenges to global health security, their implications, and strategies to address them.

1. Infectious Diseases

The emergence and spread of new infectious diseases is one of the most significant threats to global health security. Throughout history, diseases like the Black Plague, smallpox, and more recently, COVID-19 have shown how rapidly infectious diseases can devastate societies. With increasing global mobility, the risk of new pandemics is expected to grow, putting populations across the world at risk.

Globalization, urbanization, and climate change are accelerating the spread of infectious diseases. For example, changing climate patterns are expanding the habitats of disease-carrying mosquitoes, contributing to the rise in diseases like malaria, dengue, and Zika. In the face of these threats, investment in research, surveillance, and rapid-response systems is crucial to prevent future pandemics.

2. Antimicrobial Resistance

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the rapidly emerging phenomenon where bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites evolve to resist the effects of medications, including antibiotics. This resistance is becoming a critical threat to global health security, making it harder to treat certain diseases and leading to longer hospital stays, higher medical costs, and increased mortality rates.

Overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans, animals, and agriculture are driving this resistance, rendering previously treatable infections, such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, more difficult—and sometimes impossible—to cure. Without global efforts to reduce antibiotic use and promote the development of new drugs, AMR could turn into the next silent pandemic.

3. Noncommunicable Diseases

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) like cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes are now the leading cause of death worldwide. Unlike infectious diseases, NCDs are not transmitted from person to person, yet they account for more than 70% of global deaths annually. Cardiovascular diseases, particularly stroke and ischemic heart disease, are the most prevalent, affecting both high- and low-income countries.

Factors such as unhealthy diets, lack of physical activity, and tobacco and alcohol use have increased the prevalence of NCDs. Low-income countries often face double burdens, struggling with both infectious diseases and rising rates of NCDs. To address this, it is essential to promote preventive healthcare, improve access to treatments, and raise awareness of healthy lifestyle choices on a global scale.

4. Climate Change

Climate change is not just an environmental crisis but a major public health threat. Rising global temperatures, extreme weather events, and sea-level rise are already profoundly impacting health. For example, extreme heat waves lead to increased mortality and droughts that severely affect global food supply chains, while floods and hurricanes can cause injuries, death, and outbreaks of waterborne diseases.

Moreover, climate change is causing shifts in the geographic distribution of diseases like malaria, as warmer temperatures create ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes. Additionally, food security is being undermined as extreme weather events disrupt agriculture and humanitarian activities. As climate change continues to worsen, it will exacerbate existing health inequities, particularly in vulnerable and low-income communities.

5. Access to Food and Safe Water

Access to sufficient food and safe drinking water is a fundamental human right, yet millions of people around the world lack it. Hunger, malnutrition, and unsafe drinking water contribute to weakened immune systems, making individuals more susceptible to disease and exacerbating global health challenges. The impact of access to clean water on health is clear throughout Nigera, where more than 66 million people do not have access to water and 151,700+ children die annually from water-related diseases, the highest rate of any country. In Nigeria, contaminated water and poor hygiene practices account for 88% of the country’s diseases, most of which are preventable.

Food insecurity and water scarcity are worsened by climate change, population growth, and political instability. Poor sanitation and unsafe water contribute to the spread of diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Ensuring access to nutritious food and clean water is essential not only for improving global health security but also for enabling sustainable development and economic growth in disadvantaged regions.

6. Natural and Man-Made Disasters

Both natural and man-made disasters—such as earthquakes, floods, armed conflict, and terrorist attacks—pose immediate and long-term threats to global health security. These disasters can cause mass displacement, leaving refugees in dire need of healthcare, clean water, food, and shelter. Refugee populations often suffer from poor sanitation, malnutrition, and overcrowding, all of which increase the risk of infectious disease outbreaks, such as in the Ouaddai provide of Chad, where Sudanese refugees and Chadian returnees are facing a Hepatitis E outbreak.

Additionally, the mental health toll on populations affected by disasters is immense. Prolonged conflict and displacement can lead to trauma, depression, and anxiety. Responding to these crises requires coordinated international efforts, from emergency response teams to long-term rebuilding and rehabilitation of healthcare systems.

At Embrace Relief, we’re taking strides to strengthen global health security

The challenges facing global health security are vast, but they are not insurmountable. By working together, we can protect vulnerable populations, prevent disease outbreaks, and build stronger, more resilient health systems.

Embrace Relief is taking strides alongside local, regional, and international partners to strengthen global health security worldwide. We achieve our mission by supporting public health and medical facilities financially and physically by covering surgical operation costs and facilitating the acquisition of medical supplies, equipment, and medicines.

Strengthening its dedication to global health security, Embrace Relief constructs and restores water wells, provides food to millions of acutely and chronically malnourished people each year, and supports vulnerable populations, including women, children, and refugees.

We invite you to join us in our mission to improve global health security through the provision of clean water, nutritious food, healthcare, and education. Your generous donation to a cause you feel passionate about will help us deliver these essential services to the world’s most vulnerable people in economically disadvantaged countries.