Countries pledged during the recent climate change conference in Glasgow to develop health systems that are better equipped to resist changing climate.
JAMA. 2021;326(23):2353. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.21664
Bridget M. Kuehn, MSJ
December 21, 2021
On average, health care accounted for 5% of carbon emissions in 2014 in China, India, and 37 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In the US, health care accounted for almost 8% of carbon emissions.
In addition to the environmental stress from climate change, health systems themselves are vulnerable to the effects of changing climate, according to COP26’s health program.
“Climate change places stress on the capacity of health systems to prevent, adapt and respond to increased and new health risks and can also be impacted by shocks posed by increased extreme weather events,” the COP26 program stated. It noted that only half of countries worldwide have a national health and climate change strategy.
Forty-five countries also committed during the conference to create more sustainable health systems and to reduce system–level carbon emissions.
Fourteen nations set a more ambitious goal to become carbon neutral by 2050.
The United Kingdom was the world’s first nation to pledge carbon neutrality when its “net zero” strategy launched in 2020, according to the WHO.
Some changes needed to meet these goals are relatively easy.
- Switching patients to low carbon inhalers or
- using lower carbon anesthetics could help reduce health care’s carbon footprint, according to a recent analysis.
Other changes may take more time, like
- reducing unnecessary testing and
- emphasizing prevention.
The United Kingdom was the world’s first nation to pledge carbon neutrality when its “net zero” strategy launched in 2020, according to the WHO.
Originally published at https://jamanetwork.com
