Doctors and health groups are upping the ante on climate change action, as Cathy O’Leary discovers.
As floods continue to inundate communities across Australia and other regions face drought, the medical profession is increasingly taking up the call to arms on climate change.
Last month, a coalition of peak medical bodies and experts warned of mounting pressure from climate change-related health impacts on strained healthcare systems.
This followed the release of the 2022 report of the MJA-Lancet “Countdown on Health and Climate Change”, from a multi-disciplinary research group that conducts annual check-ups of Australia’s progress in tackling climate change and its health impacts.
The review found the health of Australians was being jeopardised by increasing exposure to extreme fire danger, life-threatening heat and severe drought, and more people were being displaced by weather-related disasters.
Macquarie University’s Associate Professor Paul Beggs, who led this year’s report, said Australia’s health system capacity had also deteriorated over the study period.
“In this year’s study there’s a very concerning combination of findings for Australia – increasing climate-related health threats and indicators of reduced health system capacity,” he said.
“We found numerous mounting risks to Australians’ health from fires, floods, drought, and heat and, worryingly, we also found that, for the first time since we began tracking, Australia’s health emergency management capacity has fallen.”
Professor Beggs welcomed the Federal Government’s recent budget commitment of $3.4 million over four years to develop a national climate and health strategy and set up a National Health Sustainability and Climate Unit, but he said more urgent action was needed.
In response to the MJA-Lancet report, several medical groups, including the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Public Health Association of Australia and the Australian Medical Students’ Association, called for policy measures to help safeguard human health from climate impacts.
Key recommendations include developing health and climate change plans at all levels of government; more consistently aligning government energy policies with the goals of the Paris Agreement; and incorporating environmental sustainability principles in an upcoming update of the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
AMA president Professor Steve Robson said Australia was seeing poorer health outcomes from increasing climate disasters but there was still time to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change for the next generation.
“I ask policy-makers to read this report and to act urgently on its recommendations,” he said.
Meanwhile, Doctors for the Environment Australia argues that climate change knowledge must be included in medical education.
It has helped to launch a new teaching resource – developed in collaboration with medical students and staff – to connect the dots between foundational medical learning and the clinical effects of climate change.
The DEA believes the medical workforce needs to be educated on ways to mitigate the health effects of climate change, and that these lessons need to be integrated at all levels of medical education.
The ‘planetary health organ system map’ is a new teaching tool that integrates the pathophysiological consequences of climate change into the classical organ-systems based medical curriculum.
Developed by members of DEA from the University of Melbourne, it connects planetary health – or the health of human populations and the natural world upon which this health depends – with patient care in a way that ensures the concepts are clinically relevant and can be translated into day-to-day practice.
The map also emphasises the positive health co-benefits to patients of environmentally sustainable health care.
Chair of the DEA Dr John Van Der Kallen said everyone working in health, especially doctors, needed to be aware of the links between the environment, our changing climate and health.
All medical educators, including those at medical school, prevocational teaching hospital and medical specialty college levels, were being urged to incorporate the resource into their curricula.
Those interested can contact the DEA at admin@dea.org.au