Health-Climate Change-Migration Triad and Elderly Migrant Health in Africa

Climate change is a contributing factor to the high burden of infectious and noncommunicable diseases in Africa, in particular a resource-poor setting already faced with worsening humanitarian and socio-economic crises, as well as a rising incidence and prevalence of noncommunicable and chronic diseases. Thus, examining studies on the triad, climate change-migration-health, would provide more direction on how climate change mitigation can be incorporated into health system planning in Africa. This paper seeks to review studies on the climate change-migration-health triad with a particular focus on those that address elderly health outcomes in relation to the triad and provide guidelines on how governments can enhance their health systems and mitigate climate change to enable the elderly and elderly migrants to cope and age healthily. The author conducted a review of research articles, reviews, and documents using online databases, including Google Scholar, Google, and Web of Science. The following keywords were combined with the Boolean operators AND and OR to conduct the search: ageing population, environmental changes, climate change, gerontology, and the elderly. Limiters were: language: papers published in English on the themes; and period: papers and documents from 1990 to 2025. Documents, papers, and articles were from both regional (African region) and international sources. The author's search lasted 3 weeks and yielded 44 articles, of which 18 were selected for thematic analysis. Thematic analysis of articles revealed that climate change impacts on the elderly are severe, with the elderly migrants presenting a greater vulnerability; impacts of climate change on African health systems are projected to be severe due to weak health systems. This paper underscores the need for African health systems to integrate data-driven climate change mitigation strategies into health systems and improve community engagement and international collaboration to tackle climate change and health system challenges.