Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Leading
Doctor Calls Climate Change Gravest Health Threat of 21st Century
'When you cannot feed your children, you will do anything, even
if it means going to war. This is the reality of climate change'
Climate change is the greatest threat to public health worldwide
and doctors must step up to help mitigate it, according to a leading advocate
speaking at the annual Canadian Medical Association (CMA) meeting in Vancouver
on Monday.
Dr. James Orbinski, a
former top official with the medical charity Doctors Without
Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who is now an an associate
professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, urged physicians to
"step up and step out" in the fight against climate change as part of
their duties to create "health-in-all" policies.
"We're not separate from our biosphere, or our
planet," Orbinski told the audience of 600. "We can't possibly live,
survive, and thrive without our biosphere. It affects us and we affect
it."
"Climate change is very much of our own making...but as
doctors, we have a vital responsibility to urge the development of a
health-in-all-policies approach," he said.
The summit is taking place following extreme weather events and
other environmental catastrophes throughout Canada, from wildfires in
Fort McMurray to a massive oil
spill in Saskatchewan.
The Vancouver Sun reports on
Orbinski's comments:
Droughts,
fires like the one in Fort McMurray in May, floods, food security and
infectious diseases are all linked to climate change.
Mental
health problems and respiratory ailments from air pollution as well as rising
rates of infectious diseases like West Nile virus and Lyme disease are
also some of the consequences of climate change.
He also noted that Canada's yearly rate of warming is twice the
global pace, which means the effects of climate change will increase as time
goes on, absent a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gases.
"The implications are utterly profound," Orbinski
said.
"People go to war over water, food and territory, and when
you cannot feed your children, you will do anything, even if it means going to
war. This is the reality of climate change."
CMA president Dr. Cindy Forbes said the organization would
attempt to create an action plan. "I appreciated greatly Dr. Orbinski's
call to action, and I agree as a nation and as a planet we cannot ignore
climate change," she said.
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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