Media release

From: Medical Journal of Australia

HEALTH SECTOR MUST DRIVE CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION

RECENT climate-related heat events in the Northern Hemisphere are part of a global trend with immediate and long-term implications for Australia’s health system, according to the authors of a Perspective published today by the Medical Journal of Australia.

Dr Tarun Weeramanthri, President of the Public Health Association of Australia, and colleagues said that the recent exceptional heatwave in North America’s Pacific Northwest region was “as dramatic and shocking as the bushfires in eastern Australia over the summer of 2019–2020”.

“A series of temperature records have been set, with cascading effects across a wide area of the United States and Canada,” Weeramanthri and colleagues wrote.

“For example, the temperature record for Lytton in British Columbia was broken on three successive days (27–29 June 2021), with the temperature finally reaching 49.6C — 4.6C higher than the pre-heatwave record.

“Days later, wildfires destroyed the town. The heatwave led to over 500 unexpected and potentially preventable deaths in British Columbia, and approximately 200 further deaths in the American states of Washington and Oregon, many in older people.”

As the driest inhabited continent Australia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, they wrote.

“Long-term meteorological data show an incremental and progressive rise in surface, ocean and atmospheric temperatures, with the climate warming on average by 1.4C since 1910. The year 2019 was the hottest in Australia’s history, and each decade since 1980 has been warmer than the last.”

Weeramanthri and colleagues said that Australia had four obligations in regard to global climate change action:
• “We have an absolute obligation to behave as responsible global citizens and join with other countries to urgently reduce carbon emissions and limit global warming to less than 1.5C“;

• “[The Australian health sector] needs to be a leader in climate mitigation and, in coming years, the health sector will need to decarbonise at least as fast as other sectors. If we lag behind, this will increase the burden on other sectors”;
• “To be effective advocates, we need to continue to frame climate change as a health issue, first and foremost”; and,
• “All levels of government (national, state and local) should have a defined role as for other hazards. Early warning systems should be linked to local heat health action plans that identify specific settings”.

“We need to take note of the science and real-world evidence before our eyes, urgently reduce emissions, and prepare for further such events in a planned way that prioritises equity and takes into account our specific circumstances and risks,” they concluded.

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The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.