The RACGP is calling for a net zero healthcare system by 2040.
General practice has a critical role to play in protecting health and strengthening Australia’s response to climate change, the RACGP says.
Dr Nicole Sleeman, chair of the RACGP’s climate and environment medicine group, said the college’s position statement, which initially focused on climate change, had now expanded to address the triple planetary health crisis – climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
The RACGP urged a phase-out of fossil fuels and any expansion of its infrastructure and production to reduce harmful air pollution and instead urged investment in renewable energy.
The college also called on the government to fully fund and implement a national health and climate strategy.
“The Australian health system accounts for about five to seven per cent of Australia’s total climate emissions, and so we’re a huge part of the problem,” Dr Sleeman said.
The cornerstone of a low-carbon health sector, she said, was a sustainable general practice – which delivered low-carbon healthcare and kept patients out of hospitals, the most carbon-intensive part of the system.
“The role of GPs is to build greater resilience in our communities, so they are less vulnerable to the impacts of climate hazards and to prevent avoidable hospitalisations,” Dr Sleeman said.
“We know during heatwaves, we see more young people experiencing suicidal feelings, more presentations to ED for exacerbations of depression and chronic mental illness, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and an increased risk of psychosis,” she said.
Temperature increases were also associated with higher levels of violence, most markedly intimate partner violence, due to heat stress, irritability, indoor proximity, and socioeconomic and infrastructural strains, she told The Medical Republic.
“Climate change unmasks existing inequities across our society, and it compounds them. A lack of action on climate change will only overload our system more,” she said.
The RACGP said climate responses must be developed in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, acknowledging Indigenous knowledge of health, wellbeing and climate resilience.
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Dr Kate Wylie, an Adelaide-based GP and executive director of Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA), welcomed RACGP’s leadership on climate change and health.
As frontline workers, she said GPs were essential for advocating for government action, transitioning to a net-zero healthcare system, and protecting their communities.
Dr Wylie told TMR that, following Adelaide’s hottest night ever earlier this year, patients had no respite and had suffered funny turns, UTIs, chest pain, mental health exacerbations, and some patients required hospitalisation.
France recorded more than 5700 excess deaths during its record-breaking June heatwave, according to the French national health agency – with more than half of these unprecedented deaths recorded between 25 and 27 June.
Down under, heatwaves have claimed more lives than any other natural hazard, and with climate change set to intensify, it is expected to be hotter and longer.
Dr Wylie said there was a vast and ever-growing body of evidence that climate change affects health, including the Lancet Countdown’s annual global report.
Heatwaves increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, and could exacerbate underlying conditions including asthma and diabetes, she said.
“This is a pressing health problem, and it’s only going to worsen as our planet continues to heat. Fundamentally, climate change is a health issue, and we need to treat it as we do everything else.”
“If you’re a doctor out there who’s still denying that climate change is a problem, this is a gap in your knowledge,” she said.
But she said this required adequate training and leadership from health practitioners to help patients recognise climate change as a risk.
Reducing unnecessary prescriptions or high-carbon-footprint medications where possible, such as Ventolin puffers, and explaining climate-related risk factors for a condition as part of routine management were essential to avoid making it solely a political problem, Dr Wylie told TMR.
