CLIMATE AND HEALTH
Fostering climate-smart and climate-ready hospitals.
Climate change is destroying human health today and will have a greater impact in the future. The Lancet has called it the ―biggest global health threat of the 21st century. Also, the major cause of climate change—fossil fuel burning—is causing major health problems now, adding to air pollution that kills more than six million people a year, roughly twice as many people as HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB combined.
The health sector emits greenhouse gases while delivering care and obtaining products and technologies from a carbon-intensive supply chain. Health care contributes to carbon emissions through energy use, transport, and product manufacture, use, and disposal. The worst effects of climate change can be avoided, presenting an opportunity for healthcare to play a leadership role by implementing resiliency and low-carbon development strategies within the sector while influencing others to reduce climate change and improve population health.