Doctors Can No Longer Ignore Climate Change, Says RCP President, UK

Main Category: Water - Air Quality / Agriculture
Article Date: 28 Jan 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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Professor Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians, will send out a stark warning to the medical profession about the dangers of climate change at a one-day conference to be held next Tuesday 29 January at the College.

Professor Gilmore, who is opening the conference at 9.20, will say the consequences of apathy are unthinkable, and doctors should play as big a role in championing green issues and sustainable development as they would in the clinical care of their own patients.

"As doctors, we are often looking at the single patient in front of us, but as ambassadors for improving healthcare we have roles in the NHS, in healthcare and in wider society to become champions of change to protect the planet from climate change. As private individuals, we may well act ecologically, but may not always have carried our private views into the public arena. It is time we stepped up to the plate."

The conference, chaired by David Shukman, the BBC's Environment and Science Correspondent, features international experts in climate change, looking at the issue from many different angles. Weblink to conference programme.

Dr Alan Maryon-Davis, President of the Faculty of Public Health will also join the conference for a panel discussion to urge action on these issues:

'We are facing a global public health catastrophe, and as a health and healthcare community we must use our knowledge, skills, influence and networks as urgently and effectively as possible to reduce its impact. This means doing whatever we can to help slow the inexorable climate change - but also to work with those countries and communities most likely to be affected to help build up their public health and healthcare capacity to adapt and cope with the likely consequences while there is still time."

Conference organiser Dr Hugh Montgomery, Director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance, UCL, will say that there is no greater threat to human health and survival than climate change:

"There is no doubt that Climate Change is happening. And there is no doubt that humans are causing it: every major national scientific body round the world - including Germany, India, China, the UK, and the USA - agrees. Nor is there any doubt about the consequences. They will be very grave indeed. There is no greater threat to human health and survival than climate change. For those of us working as doctors, its imminent and severe threat dwarfs any survival gains due to our daily healthcare activity. Such threats are not just of altered disease patterns for those in distant lands, but are to us and our children: economic collapse, migration and war know no boundaries.

Neither does the impact of ecosystem collapse: we are already losing 3 known species an hour, and face the fact that over 50% of the world's species committed to extinction within a few decades.

The time for talk is over. The time now is for action - from politicians, but also from individuals. And healthcare workers should be in the vanguard."

Royal College of Physicians