While floods and other extreme weather events capture most of the popular attention about the health impacts of climate change, some medical students want to learn, and in turn teach, that it goes much further.
Vidya Anathakumar, a 21-year-old medical student at the University of Glasgow, says that we often hear about global warming and flooding, but not the specific related health problems; where failed crops create food shortages that weaken people’s immune systems, for example, or diseases like malaria lengthen the seasons and spread more easily and farther from their historic homes near the equator.
“All of this has a really big impact on people’s health and also on their mental health,” he said, just to the left of the stage where Greta Thunberg and a series of indigenous, youth and labor representatives took turns speaking with those gathered. . crowd at a climate rally last Friday. “I am here protesting because the climate crisis is a health crisis. And that’s something that is not talked about enough. “
He said understanding that climate change can already directly affect patients and their families could encourage more medical professionals to speak out in support of climate action.
Medical students are generally encouraged to take a dispassionate professional position at odds with causes of social justice, he said.
“There is a great culture in medicine of … not enough support,” he said. “It is a great privilege for us to be educated in these things, and it seems that we should be educating more people.”
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A group of students is trying to pressure medical schools to do just that, producing a Planetary Health Report Card which uses five metrics to compare how schools are doing in teaching about the climate crisis, including the curriculum, the amount of interdisciplinary research in health and the environment, community outreach and advocacy, support for student-led initiatives, and sustainability.
McGill, the only Canadian medical school currently included in the rankings with schools in the US and others in the UK and Ireland, scored mostly a C and an occasional B in the latest report.
The health sector worldwide accounts for 4.6% of greenhouse gas emissions and generates 10% of the world’s gross domestic product, the The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday as announced, 50 countries had committed to making their health care systems more “climate smart.”
Vidya Anathakumar, a 21-year-old medical student at the University of Glasgow, says we often hear about global warming and flooding, but not the specific related health issues. #Health #Climate crisis # COP26 # COP26xCNO
The United States and the United Kingdom are among those who signed the agreement, but Canada is not.
The WHO explained that all 50 will seek climate resilience in healthcare and 45 have pledged to make their health systems more sustainable. Fourteen, including the UK, set a target date for reaching net zero carbon emissions in 2050 or earlier.
For England’s National Health Service (NHS), that means a zero emission fleet, including an ambulance capable of traveling 300 miles before being charged, and a net zero construction standard that would apply to an existing commitment of build 48 new hospitals. before 2030, the UK government said.
WHO co-sponsored the COP26 health program with the UK government, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and health groups such as Health Care Without Harm.
Mutual aid for community health
Anathakumar said a local concern in Glasgow is that a sea level rise expected by 2030 could raise the River Clyde enough to flood parts of the city and threaten its sewage system during a flood, potentially contaminating drinking water. and encourage the spread of disease.
“I believe that having strong and resilient communities and mutual aid groups, which began to emerge in [the COVID] lockdown, that really helps because a lot of these effects are going to affect the poorest people and people in lower demographic areas, ”he said.
“If you have people who know and take care of each other, and really care beyond the capitalist idea of using people for needs, I think that would really help. People who support each other. “
Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada National Observer
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com