Climate change is not new. Since the beginning of the new millennium, there have been headlines outlining the impending doom of human civilisation through rising temperatures, sea-level changes, and unpredictable and powerful weather events. This coupled with increasing air pollution worldwide, a growing and ageing population, and reduction of useable resources creates a major change to the future of healthcare. How? The more the negative impacts of climate change and pollution, the more health issues that arise.
Due to bad air, a lack of clean water, a lack of food, and the need for mass migration due to unlivable temperatures towards the equator, health conditions will be both physical and mental. The World Health Organisation has hypothesised that between 2030 and 2050, 250,000 more people will die each year as a result of climate change if nothing is done about it right now, and according to the New England Journal of Medicine, this number is conservative.
The economic effects of climate change will also be devastating as the price of everything increases due to a lack of supply. The World Bank predicts that by 2050, 100 million people will be facing extreme poverty, meaning their ability to afford healthcare will be greatly reduced. The ratio of patients to healthcare professionals will also skyrocket, which will reduce the quality of care.
The most ironic outcome from these predictions is that healthcare as an industry itself is one of the largest contributors to the carbon emissions that are accelerating climate change. In Australia, the healthcare industry makes up 7% of carbon emissions, according to a 2014-15 report by The Lancet Planetary Health report. This is due to the fact that it takes a lot of energy to keep large hospitals and related healthcare facilities running with all its equipment and air conditioning systems, as well as producing a lot of waste that needs to be processed, which also takes a lot of energy. Our own healthcare industry seems to be one of the worst offenders internationally, particularly when compared to the UK and the USA who have much smaller percentages.
On one hand, this could be good news for the healthcare industry as more patients mean more in demand healthcare professionals would be. On the other hand, overcrowding of hospitals and GP clinics will lead to adverse outcomes of healthcare workers being overworked and stressed which may lead to mental breakdowns. With a higher incidence of sickness condensed into the same area such as waiting rooms and crowded hospital beds, the outbreak of diseases will become more frequent, with workers themselves getting the bad end of the stick. The cons clearly outweigh the pros.
Luckily, this is a future that doesn’t have to come true.
The first step to creating a better future is recognising that there is a problem. Spreading awareness about the problem across the industry is critical as this change needs to be a group effort, not an individual one. Healthcare Without Harm, an international NGO, has been created to manage the issues of climate change and its effects on the global healthcare industry. They’ve come up with a guide for hospitals to reduce their effect on climate change called the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals Agenda. It outlines the need for strong leadership, a reduction of waste, use of renewable energy sources, water conservation, effective transportation, local farming, and green architecture. A combination of these elements will ultimately lead to a sustainable future with fewer emissions and pollution.
In Australia, researchers from Monash University's Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences and the Sustainable Development Institution were recently awarded crucial research funding to come up with ways to best educate Australia’s future health workforce about environmental sustainability to prevent climate change from reaching a point of no return. Read their findings here.
A broader discussion surrounding these issues need to be held at high levels of government in order to eliminate the possibility of overcrowding of healthcare facilities in the near future.
What you can do as part of this process is to increase the awareness of the impact of climate change on healthcare in Australia, and educate yourself and others about the benefits of sustainability in healthcare so that we collectively live to see a brighter future.
