Climate Change Health Catastrophe Warning
January 29th 2008
Senior doctors today warn of the massive health challenges posed by the threat of global warming. Climate change could lead to a "global public health catastrophe", according to the president of the faculty of public health, Dr Alan Maryon-Davis.
Dr Maryon-Davis is one of the speakers at an international conference on climate change, to be held at the Royal College of Physicians.
He said: "As a health and healthcare community we must use our knowledge, skills, influence and networks as urgently and effectively as possible to reduce its impact.
"This means doing whatever we can to help slow the inexorable climate change - but also to work with those countries and communities most likely to be affected to help build up their public health and healthcare capacity to adapt and cope with the likely consequences while there is still time."
The college president Professor Ian Gilmore is to tell delegates: "As doctors, we are often looking at the single patient in front of us, but as ambassadors for improving healthcare we have roles in the NHS, in healthcare and in wider society to become champions of change to protect the planet from climate change."
The conference follows an article at the weekend in the British Medical Journal, written by an Australian expert.
According to Professor Anthony McMichael, of the Australian National University, Canberra, climate change poses a greater threat to human health than it does to the world economy.
He says the risks to health are many, and include the impact of heat waves, floods and wildfires, changes in infectious disease patterns, the effect of worsening food yields and loss of livelihoods.
He calls for "more bold and far-sighted policy decisions" at national and international level to arrest the process. Health professionals "have both the opportunity and responsibility to contribute to resolving this momentous issue," according to the professor.
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