Climate change is killing Aussies, 12 doctors groups warn the PM

A dozen leading doctors groups have written to the PM urging action on an environmental issue that could be as deadly as Covid-19.

Thousands of Australians will die in bushfires, floods, from heat stroke and mosquito-borne diseases unless Australia slashes carbon emissions by 70 per cent by 2030, doctors have warned.

A dozen leading doctors groups have written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison urging him to commit to an ambitious national plan to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the upcoming Glasgow global climate meeting.

Australia’s recent Black Summer bushfires and recent devastating floods in Europe and Australia are living proof of how climate change is killing humans, they said.

“It’s been widely considered for over a decade now that climate change is possibly the greatest health threat of this century,” Doctors for the Environment spokeswoman Dr Eugenie Kayak said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been urged to commit to a national plan on greenhouse gas emissions. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

The open letter was signed by the AMA, Doctors for the Environment Australia, (DEA) and many medical colleges: The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA), The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), The Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM), The College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand (CICM), The Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators (RACMA), The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG), The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCOG) and the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).

Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid. Picture: Supplied

“The 2019-2020 bushfire season in Australia saw parts of the country afflicted by the poorest air quality in the world, with large numbers of the population enduring weeks of bushfire smoke and the related adverse health impacts,” the letter states.

“That climate disaster also tragically took more than 30 lives as a direct result of the fires,” the letter said.

“Since then, we have seen the stark impacts of extreme weather events playing out in the northern hemisphere in 2021. Flooding, fires and heatwaves not only have immediate health risks, but also come with the longer-term physical, economic and mental impacts of displacement, loss of life and loss of livelihoods,” the doctors warn.

Australia’s bushfires have caused a climate disaster. Picture AAP Image/Dean Lewins

“The government must urgently act to significantly reduce emissions this decade. Severe fires, superstorms and floods have arrived and are destroying lives,” Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid said.

Doctors for the Environment Australia Chair Dr John Van Der Kallen said doctors are already dealing with the reality of climate change in their surgeries and in emergency departments.

To fix the problem Australia must urgently end its reliance on coal and fossil fuel, electrify the transport system and shift to renewable energy like solar and wind power, Dr Kayak said.

The group has documented how climate change affects health through physical trauma, illness and mortality caused by extreme weather events such as floods, storms, bushfires and heatwaves, and indirectly through changing patterns of infectious diseases and air pollution.

“The death toll from heatwaves in Australia has exceeded that for any other environmental disaster,” the group said.

Heatwaves cause dehydration, heat exhaustion, heatstroke and worsening of heart, lung, and kidney disease and are linked to increased pre-term birthrates, the doctors warn.

Over the summer of 2019-2020, 80 per cent of the Australian population was exposed to air pollution from bushfire smoke and Queensland’s 2011 floods saw 33 people die.

“One study has estimated that there were 417 excess deaths from bushfire smoke, with over 3000 hospital presentations for heart and lung conditions and over 1000 emergency presentations for asthma and linked to preterm births,” the group said.

Notifications of dengue virus infections in northern Australia have increased over the past 30 years, from a few hundred to over a thousand cases annually and the mosquitoes that cause it are moving South.

Originally published as Climate change is killing Aussies, 12 doctors groups warn the PM