Montreal family doctor Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers sees climate change as a global “risk amplifier.”
He says it increases the potential for danger in every way, from threatening the most basic determinants of health, such as air quality and access to food and water, to exacerbating seasonal allergies and tick-borne Lyme disease.
Pétrin-Desrosiers, president of the Quebec chapter of the Canadian Association of Environmental Physicians, is among a group of doctors who say Canada’s health care system is unprepared for the worsening effects of climate change.
A man jumps on a skimboard while wading through the tides of the Spanish Banks as smoke from wildfires hangs over downtown Vancouver, B.C., Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022. A medical group says the Canada’s health care system is not prepared because the worsening effects of climate change and not adapting would mean the loss of more lives. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Finola Hackett, a surrogate physician who works in rural communities in southern Alberta, said that ignoring the “climate crisis when it comes to health, in the long run, is going to be very costly, not just in terms of dollars, but in lives “.
Both say acting now has the potential to save lives.
“This is motivation enough for us to do the work,” Pétrin-Desrosiers said.
Hackett and Pétrin-Desrosiers are co-lead authors of a policy note on Canada released last week alongside a global report produced by the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, published by the Lancet medical journal.
The Lancet report highlights the health risks of global warming, pointing to the heat dome that settled over British Columbia in the summer of 2021 as an example.
The heat dome, which caused more than 600 deaths in BC, would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change, the peer-reviewed report says.
The Canadian policy paper says the health care system has the potential to increase resilience to this extreme heat and other climate-related health risks, but is far from ready, especially given the COVID pandemic -19.
He says heat waves can increase the number of emergency room visits by 10 to 15 percent, further straining care capacity and reducing the quality of care.
In Alberta, Hackett said he sees patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, during periods of air pollution from wildfire smoke.
Both Hackett and Pétrin-Desrosiers said they are also concerned about the effects of climate change on mental health, having seen evidence of increased cases of post-traumatic stress disorder following extreme weather events such as floods
This is concerning, Pétrin-Desrosiers said, because access to mental health care in the public system is already lacking, with long waiting lists across the country.
Health Canada’s own assessment of climate change and health released earlier this year says global warming is “already affecting the health of Canadians and, without concerted action, will continue to cause injury, illness and death.”
Greater warming will bring greater risks, but many impacts could be avoided “if Canada rapidly and substantially increases efforts now to adapt,” the report says.
The links between climate change and health are also the focus of Public Health Canada’s director of public health, Theresa Tam’s annual report released last week.
The report says “urgent public health action is needed to prepare for, protect against, and respond to the current and future health impacts of climate change.”
Both the Health Canada report and the public health official stress the importance of involving those most affected by climate change in adaptation planning, noting that vulnerability is often linked to additional social inequalities, such as low income, inadequate housing and food insecurity.
These reports, along with some action at the provincial level, show there is a growing recognition of the health risks posed by climate change, Hackett says.
“But in terms of actually having measures in our clinics, in our hospitals, in our healthcare organizations, we’re in the early stages,” he says.
The Canadian policy paper notes that the governments of BC, Ontario and Quebec have taken steps to assess the links between climate change and health, but Hackett said these initiatives are “fragmented” without any national coordination.
Similarly, Pétrin-Desrosiers said Health Canada made a commitment on paper to improve health system resilience, but that has not yet translated into action at the pace needed to address the growing risks.
The doctors’ policy brief recommends that provincial and territorial health authorities conduct climate resilience analyzes to identify priority actions and calls on Ottawa to create a national secretariat “to coordinate the transformation of Canada’s health care system” into one that is resilient for the purposes of climate change.
Adaptation measures he suggests could include climate risk training for healthcare workers and the creation of healthcare contingency plans for extreme weather events.
The federal government is expected to finalize a national climate change adaptation strategy later this year, with health and wellbeing as one of five key areas.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on October 30, 2021.