As concern about the climate emergency grows doctors have descended on Parliament House in the national capital, Canberra, today to call on the conservative Liberal-National federal government to take urgent steps to prepare health services for more extreme weather events and disasters.
Medical group, Doctors for the Environment Australia, delivered pledges to Health Minister Greg Hunt from a number of associations to protect children’s health from worsening climate change.
“Climate change exposes children to greater risk of respiratory illness, increases in childhood emergency department visits for asthma, fever, gastroenteritis and heat stroke,” the group’s spokesman Dr Ingo Weber said in a statement reported by AAP Newsagency.
“Also, more frequent extreme weather events place them at risk of physical injury and psychological trauma.
“Children’s bodies and minds are still developing, and long after the fires have gone the mental scars remain.”
AAP reports Senior Australian of the Year 2019 and paediatrician Sue Packer addressed an event at Parliament House, along with opposition Labor Party’s climate spokesman Mark Butler and independent MPs, Zali Steggall and Andrew Wilkie.
The pledges have been endorsed by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, the Australasian College of Sport and Exercise Physicians and the Australian Medical Students’ Association, and more than 2000 health professionals, including Professor Fiona Stanley.
AAP reports New South Wales state Liberal-National government Water Minister Melinda Pavey was unimpressed.
“I would actually like to see them protest to get some more doctors into my country town, that’s what I would like to see,” Ms Pavey told reporters in Canberra.
“We have a crisis right now in my communities with too few doctors willing to live outside of the city.”
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