Medical Experts Warn Australia’s Climate Change Is A Health Crisis

An alliance of Australia’s peak medical bodies has warned the burden to hospitals and health services are being compounded by a failure to tackle climate change.

President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Dr Jacqueline Small, said recent flooding events across Australia “forewarns increased frequency and intensity of all extreme weather events as a consequence of climate change”.

“This is both an immediate and long-term reality.

“We urge the federal government to move with urgency and ambition on plans for a national climate change, health and wellbeing strategy,” she said.

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It follows the latest MJA-Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report, an annual assessment of health and climate change.

The 2022 review found that climate change does impact human health through a range of environmental exposures and extreme events, including life-threatening heat, heatwaves, bushfires and smoke, droughts and floods, as well as other disasters.

The Australian Medical Association president, Prof Steve Robson, has urged politicians to “read this report and to act urgently on its recommendations”.

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