By Mr. Alexander Skinner and Professor Nibedita Ray-Bennett
Climate change isn’t just about rising seas and carbon emissions—it’s a health crisis, especially for women of reproductive age in disaster-prone regions. When floods, cyclones, or heatwaves strike, access to essential reproductive healthcare often disappears. Missed or incomplete abortions and lack of menstrual regulation services can quickly turn into life-threatening emergencies. Yet, these needs are routinely sidelined in humanitarian response.
At COP30, where implementation is the focus, the University of Leicester’s Avoidable Deaths Network is addressing this gap through Facility and Mobile Reproductive Health Kits. These kits provide life-saving essential and emergency medicines, equipment, consumables and informational guidelines for post-abortion care, designed for use by existing health workers in disaster zones—no extra specialists, no complex logistics.
Built on localisation principles, the Kits are tailored to national contexts in Bangladesh, India, and other low- and middle-income countries, ensuring cultural appropriateness and integration into health systems. They align with global standards, including SDG 3 and the UN’s Minimum Initial Service Package.
Climate pledges must translate into action. These kits are practical, scalable, and urgently needed. Because climate change isn’t just an environmental crisis—it’s a reproductive health crisis.
To learn more about the Kits, please click here: https://www.avoidable-deaths.net/facility-and-mobile-reproductive-health-kits-for-disasters-and-crises/
Author’s Short Bios
Mr. Alexander Skinner is Director of K2 Crisis & Resilience. He is a Project Coordinator at the ADN, University of Leicester, and a Leading Member of the ADN Network on Loss and Damage.
Professor Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett is Founding President and Convenor of the ADN; Professor in Risk Management; and Associate Director of the Institute for Environmental Futures (IEF), at the University of Leicester (UoL). She is Founding President of the Avoidable Deaths Lab (ADL) and Leading Member of the ADN Network on Loss and Damage.