As medical professionals, Doctors for the Environment Australia is extremely concerned the federal and state governments are neglecting their duty of care to citizens and society to both limit climate change to the extent possible, thereby preventing the likely health consequences, and also to prepare Australia for those effects which we cannot avoid. It is predicted Australia will face days hotter than 50C within 10 or 15 years under continuing global warming- the human body struggles to cope with such temperatures, such a situation would dramatically increase the number of heat-related deaths and illnesses. Everyday human activity will be profoundly affected according to the Report: outdoor workers productivity declines and growing food will be an increasing challenge. Our health systems and emergency services are largely unprepared to cope with the effects of increasing extreme weather events. Recent events serve only too well to highlight this. Queensland’s floods of 2011 saw drowning, injuries, water-insecurity, mosquito-borne, water-borne and soil infectious diseases, all aside from the ongoing mental health impacts we still see today. The economic costs were considerable. In the Fitzroy River basin, flood levels silently rose over sandbags, drowned the pumps and inundated General Practitioner practices. In 2009, the Black Saturday fires claimed 173 lives, and many don’t know that the simultaneous heat wave across Victoria killed a further 374 people. Read more: sbs.au/news/article/2014/11/04/comment-current-health-care-system-unprepared-effects-climate-change
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 23:53:07 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015