Climate change and health in South Asia: A systematic mapping

Climate change is a major threat to human health in South Asia. We mapped existing research on climate change and health in South Asia, identified research gaps, and developed a list of research questions (RQs) to inform a research priority setting (RPS) exercise.

We searched in 5 electronic databases for studies published after 2008, followed by screening and data extraction using standard evidence synthesis methods. We conducted a structured narrative synthesis and created evidence gap maps. We extracted RQs verbatim (or in their absence aims/objectives) and coded them to identify unique RQs.

We retrieved 7273 records to include 308 studies from different countries in South Asia (Bangladesh -96, Bhutan - 4, India -142, Nepal -39, Pakistan - 46, and Sri Lanka - 13). They were categorized as research on: 1. health impacts of climate change (243, 78.90%), addressing 14 broader unique RQs and studying impact on 15 unique health conditions; 2. interventions to protect health from climate change (18, 5.84%), addressing 6 unique RQs; 3. climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts (40, 12.99%), addressing 9 unique RQs; 4. policy, governance, and decision-making tools (34, 11.04%), addressing 6 unique RQs; and 5. adaptation or development of tools and frameworks (9, 2.92%), addressing 3 unique RQs. Evidence gaps were also visualized.

To the best of our knowledge this is the first systematic map of this domain. We envisage this to facilitate future evidence synthesis and RPS in the region.