The review, which synthesised peer-reviewed literature and authoritative institutional sources published between January 2000 and June 2026, draws a technically important distinction between two categories of disease. Directly climate-sensitive infections, including cholera, malaria, dengue, and Rift Valley fever, are influenced by climatic and environmental conditions through water, vector, and ecological pathways. Indirectly climate-amplified vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, diphtheria, and polio, are driven primarily by displacement, malnutrition, overcrowding, and interrupted immunisation, all of which intensify when climate shocks strike. The authors stress that preserving this distinction matters because each category demands different surveillance triggers and different preparedness responses.

The cholera pathway illustrates the mechanics. Flooding can contaminate water sources and overwhelm sanitation systems, while drought pushes households and internally displaced person communities toward unsafe water points and erodes hygiene capacity. World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean situation reports have documented continued cholera and acute watery diarrhoea transmission following the 2023 outbreak wave, including spread into flood-affected districts, with inadequate safe water and sanitation among displaced populations identified as a major risk. In a climate-informed system, rainfall and flood alerts, WASH breakdown reports, displacement density, and diarrhoeal clusters would be monitored together so that water treatment, case management, and community response could be triggered earlier.

Vector-borne diseases require a different surveillance lens. Malaria risk in Somalia is mediated by seasonal rainfall, flooding, standing water, and temperature, which shape Anopheles mosquito breeding, particularly where displacement and disrupted access to prevention and treatment increase vulnerability. Dengue has been confirmed in Puntland and Banadir, and outbreak investigations have identified stagnant water, containers, and other household breeding sites as important local risks. The review notes that modelling from Ethiopia and broader African evidence suggesting climate change could shift disease burden from malaria toward arboviruses should be treated as contextual rather than Somalia-specific. For these diseases, the authors argue, surveillance should combine climate data, fever syndromic reporting, entomological monitoring, diagnostic readiness, and district risk mapping.

Rift Valley fever stands out as the country’s most significant zoonotic climate-sensitive threat. In Somalia’s 2023 zoonoses prioritisation exercise, RVF was ranked first among seven priority zoonoses, reflecting the country’s deep dependence on livestock. Serological evidence of the virus in ruminants from Afgoye and Jowhar indicates exposure at the animal interface, although the human burden remains poorly characterised. Because risk rises with heavy rainfall, flooding, livestock movement, and mosquito proliferation, the review argues that surveillance must connect animal abortion events, unexplained livestock mortality, vector signals, and human febrile alerts before human cases appear, a quintessentially One Health requirement spanning human, animal, and environmental sectors.

On the vaccine-preventable side, Somali studies show that vaccination uptake among internally displaced populations is shaped by household, service, and policy barriers, while zero-dose children are concentrated in nomadic, remote, and conflict-affected communities. Climate shocks amplify risk through displacement, malnutrition, overcrowding in settlements, cold-chain disruption, and reduced healthcare access. The corresponding warning signals are therefore not meteorological but social: internal displacement influxes, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification acute malnutrition classifications of Phase 3 or higher, low immunisation coverage, and the identification of zero-dose clusters. Preparedness actions include mobile vaccination outreach, zero-dose child mapping, cold-chain monitoring, and community health worker deployment.

Somalia is far from devoid of surveillance assets. The Early Warning Alert and Response Network, built incrementally since 2008, and the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response System with its DHIS2 platform, operational since 2016, form the health surveillance core. A formal evaluation of EWARN from 2017 to 2020 documented meaningful progress: the proportion of timely reports rose from 24.6 percent in 2017 to 96.8 percent by 2020, and alert verification improved from 2.0 percent to 52.6 percent over the same period. Yet data completeness averaged below 60 percent across all four evaluation years, and the system remains insufficiently integrated with non-health warning platforms. Beyond the health sector, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit, WASH cluster monitoring, displacement tracking, nutrition surveillance, and livestock reporting all generate relevant intelligence. An ecological study of displacement in Somalia found strong associations between failed rains and population movement at a three-month lag and food insecurity at a one-month lag, temporal patterns with direct implications for outbreak preparedness. None of these streams are routinely fused with disease surveillance at the district level or with each other.

The governance and financing barriers the review identifies are structural rather than technological. A global analysis of 64 infectious disease warning and response systems found that 80 percent were reactive, designed to respond after case counts rise, and only 6 percent were prevention-centred, linking upstream risk signals to strategies addressing the drivers of disease emergence. Somalia exemplifies this pattern. Disease surveillance, food security monitoring, WASH assessment, displacement tracking, livestock health reporting, and hydrometeorological forecasting each operate through separate mandates, funding lines, and reporting hierarchies. Somalia’s 2023 IHR-PVS National Bridging Workshop identified joint surveillance systems, high-level ministerial coordination, and emergency funding structures as priority unmet needs. At the district level, many health teams lack trained personnel, diagnostic equipment, reliable connectivity, and logistics for timely alert verification, while insecurity restricts access to conflict-affected areas and laboratory capacity remains concentrated in a small number of facilities.

Financing emerges as perhaps the most binding constraint. Somalia’s IDSRS implementation progress stands at only 15 percent for the financing domain, the lowest across all assessed dimensions, reflecting prolonged over-reliance on short-term, project-cycle humanitarian funding. This structure impedes sustained investment in surveillance staffing, supply pre-positioning, routine supervision, and the flexible pre-allocated budgets that anticipatory preparedness requires. One Health coordination, meanwhile, remains nascent and dependent on external donor support, not yet embedded in government planning or budgeting at federal, state, or district levels. These deficits fall hardest on the populations bearing the greatest risk: internally displaced persons, nomadic and agropastoral communities, malnourished children, zero-dose children, and people in insecure or hard-to-reach areas, all of whom are less visible in routine surveillance and less likely to be reached by early response.

The framework the authors propose does not require new institutions. It builds on existing assets and operates in five linked stages: multisource signal detection combining climate forecasts, WASH conditions, displacement movements, nutrition intelligence, livestock reports, laboratory information, and community signals; integrated district risk assessment that interprets these signals jointly with EWARN and IDSRS data; a disease-specific trigger decision against pre-agreed criteria; early preparedness action such as commodity pre-positioning, rapid-response team mobilisation, and targeted outreach; and feedback, accountability, and learning to refine triggers over time. An illustrative composite trigger for a flood-prone district along the Jubba or Shabelle rivers could activate when an official flood warning coincides with documented deterioration in safe water or sanitation and an increase in acute watery diarrhoea alerts, though the authors emphasise that exact thresholds would require local calibration and prospective validation. The deeper reframe is conceptual: climate-informed surveillance should be understood not as better data collection but as an anticipatory public health function designed to act before climate shocks converge with vulnerability and become infectious disease emergencies. The lessons, the authors argue, extend well beyond Somalia to any fragile, conflict-affected, and climate-vulnerable setting where warnings already exist but action does not follow.

Subject of Research: Climate-informed surveillance and early warning systems for climate-sensitive infectious diseases in Somalia

Article Title: Climate-informed surveillance for climate-sensitive infectious diseases in Somalia: early warning systems, policy gaps, and preparedness priorities

Article References: Hassan, A. A., Sudi, L. A., Mohamed, M. D., Ibrahim, I. O., & Abdullahi, Y. B. (2026). Climate-informed surveillance for climate-sensitive infectious diseases in Somalia: early warning systems, policy gaps, and preparedness priorities. Frontiers in Epidemiology, 6, Article 1907542. https://doi.org/10.3389/fepid.2026.1907542

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fepid.2026.1907542

Keywords: Somalia, climate change, infectious disease surveillance, early warning systems, cholera, malaria, dengue, Rift Valley fever, measles, One Health, anticipatory action, fragile health systems

The study focused on three wards in Nyanga District—Tangwena, Samanyika, and Kute—that were selected for their documented exposure to the storm and established vulnerability profiles. The researchers drew on eight focus group discussions, 27 in-depth interviews with affected households and key informants from the Department of Civil Protection, UNDP, the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society, and the Meteorological Services Department, alongside field observations and government documents. Conducted primarily in Shona and analyzed thematically using NVivo, the qualitative approach was designed to capture the social and institutional dynamics that quantitative damage assessments often miss. The result is a granular portrait of a disaster that struck households already struggling with poor roads, settlement on steep slopes and floodplains, and the lingering memory of Idai.

The physical impacts of Cyclone Ana were substantial for a moderate storm. Field assessments documented 126 affected houses, 70 of which were rendered uninhabitable, displacing families into temporary shelters and overcrowded public facilities. Flooding damaged boreholes and latrines, forcing some residents into open defecation and others into longer journeys for safe water; one female-headed household reported that daily water collection increased by roughly 3.5 kilometers, adding about two hours to caregiving duties. The Murozi footbridge, which provides access to nine villages and serves approximately 135 schoolchildren, was destroyed, while sections of the Troutbeck-Nyafaru road became impassable, delaying emergency assistance. Because the cyclone hit shortly before the main harvest, maize, bean, and vegetable fields were inundated, irrigation schemes and dip tanks were destroyed, and small livestock were lost during evacuations—triggering cascading effects that included food insecurity, school dropouts, and mounting psychological strain.

Perhaps the most striking finding concerns preparedness. Seventy-six percent of participants were unaware of any formal emergency preparedness plans, and roughly 64 percent said they had never been consulted during risk assessments or disaster plan development. Ward-level disaster risk management plans drafted in 2018 with external support were intended to guide local action until 2024, but document analysis showed they remained heavily response-oriented: only 18 percent of their content addressed preparedness, compared with 65 percent devoted to response. Capacity assessments of 45 disaster risk management committee members revealed deep deficits—35 lacked contingency planning experience, 40 had never been trained in post-disaster needs assessment, and about 70 percent reported no refresher training in the previous three years. Only 24 percent of the district’s committees met regularly, while nearly a third were largely inactive.

The researchers trace these weaknesses to structural and legal roots. At the time of Cyclone Ana, Zimbabwe’s disaster framework was still anchored in the Civil Protection Act of 1989, a hazard-focused, response-oriented law that gives limited weight to prevention and preparedness and specifies contingency planning mechanisms only vaguely. Donor funding cycles reinforce the imbalance, mobilizing resources after disasters strike rather than sustaining risk reduction between events. As one official told the researchers, communities ask politicians about new boreholes and clinics, not about disaster preparedness—until the cyclone hits. The result is a governance system in which decentralization exists on paper but budgets, technical support, and decision-making authority remain concentrated at levels far removed from the villages where floods and landslides actually occur.

Early warning performance during Ana was equally revealing. The Meteorological Services Department issued regular bulletins through print, broadcast, and social media in coordination with civil protection authorities, and around 70 percent of participants reported receiving some form of warning. But the messages were technical and generalized, referring broadly to thundery showers, downpours, and strong winds across several provinces without specifying local risks or recommended actions. Terms such as tropical depression and overland depression were poorly understood, particularly among older residents, and warnings rarely addressed secondary hazards like landslides or infrastructure failure. Roughly 30 percent of participants received no warning at all, hindered by unstable mobile networks, poor radio reception in mountainous terrain, and damaged roads that impeded door-to-door communication. Even where 31 evacuation centers had been designated, the district lacked clear evacuation protocols, transport plans, and pre-positioned supplies—so warnings did not consistently translate into protective action.

Social and cognitive factors compounded the problem. More than half of participants believed the storm would not directly affect them, often citing past forecasts they perceived as exaggerated. Others prioritized livestock and crops over personal safety, and some expressed skepticism toward government information. The researchers interpret these patterns through established frameworks such as Protective Action Decision Theory, noting that residents filtered official warnings through prior experience and local knowledge—so-called disaster scripts that normalized risk. One farmer recounted how traditional signs, from the behavior of birds to the color of the evening sky, prompted her family to move their goats to higher ground before dawn, even as the same knowledge could not save their maize crop. Indigenous early warning, the study suggests, is a genuine asset, but one with limits under extreme conditions and in need of integration with technical forecasting rather than substitution for it.

The response phase exposed both institutional fragility and remarkable community resilience. Detailed damage assessments in the worst-hit villages took nearly two weeks, hampered by impassable roads, fuel shortages, and limited vehicles; of the 7.3 million dollars allocated nationally for disaster risk management in 2022, only about 28 percent supported operational logistics. Residents were repeatedly surveyed by different agencies yet received little assistance, and coordination gaps produced fragmented vulnerability data. Meanwhile, only 20 of the 126 affected households received government-prefabricated shelters, with allocations that sometimes ignored household size—one family of more than 20 members received a single unit. In the vacuum, communities organized themselves: youth cleared debris from blocked paths, churches provided food, and families whose homes survived sheltered those who had lost everything. The authors argue these grassroots efforts were not merely a stopgap but a core, under-recognized component of community-based disaster risk management that formal systems should support, resource, and scale.

Recovery, supported in part by a crisis modifier under the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund and technical backing from UNDP, produced genuine gains alongside persistent inequities. Forty houses received reconstruction or rehabilitation support guided by Build Back Better principles, and a piped water supply installed at Dazi School and Clinic allowed services to resume—what the authors call a recovery surplus, improving conditions beyond pre-disaster baselines. Roads and footbridges along the Troutbeck-Dazi-Nyafaru corridor were rehabilitated, roughly 600 farmers received short-cycle seed inputs, and 126 local leaders and officials received disaster risk reduction training. Yet many households were left patching roofs with plastic sheeting and salvaged debris, and eligibility criteria excluded some affected farmers from livelihood support entirely. Short funding cycles and narrow targeting, the study concludes, can entrench the very vulnerabilities recovery is meant to reduce.

The broader significance of the Nyanga case lies in what it establishes as a baseline for reform. Since Cyclone Ana, Zimbabwe has pursued a new Disaster Risk Management and Civil Protection Bill, impact-based forecasting, anticipatory action frameworks, and strengthened contingency planning—developments the authors welcome as real progress. But their analysis identifies a critical implementation gap between policy commitments and local practice, visible in gaps of interpretation, coordination, financing, and first-mile communication. Closing it, they argue, requires aligning legislative reform, sustainable financing, and institutional capacity with genuinely community-centered approaches that embed local knowledge and participation across every stage of risk governance. As cyclones such as Freddy, Filipo, and Chido continue to test the region, the lesson from Nyanga is that effective disaster management depends not only on better forecasts and laws, but on sustained investment in the institutions, trust, and collective capacities of the communities who face the storm first.

Subject of Research: Disaster preparedness, response, and recovery from Tropical Cyclone Ana in Nyanga District, Zimbabwe

Article Title: Assessing Disaster Preparedness and Recovery from Tropical Cyclones in Zimbabwe: Insights from Cyclone Ana in Nyanga

Article References: Mabumbo, D., & Ngulube, N. K. (2026). Assessing Disaster Preparedness and Recovery from Tropical Cyclones in Zimbabwe: Insights from Cyclone Ana in Nyanga. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-026-00759-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s13753-026-00759-1

Keywords: tropical cyclones, Zimbabwe, Cyclone Ana, disaster risk management, early warning systems, community-based disaster risk management, Nyanga District, Cyclone Idai, build back better, anticipatory action, disaster recovery, impact-based forecasting