The climate crisis is a cause for major concern in the Pacific region, and the healthcare sector stands at a crossroads, where it can either continue contributing to the climate crisis or lead the transition to a sustainable future.
Speaking at the ECO Care Equity in the Asia-Pacific Conference held at the University of Fiji, Samabula, Enterprise Professor in Sustainable Healthcare at the University of Melbourne, Eugenie Kayak stressed that healthcare must urgently transform to become part of the climate solution.
She warns that if the global healthcare sector were treated as a country, it would rank as the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
She says this is driven largely by its supply chains, medical goods, anaesthetic gases, and energy-intensive hospital operations.
Professor Kayak emphasised that we have only one planet, and healthy people depend on a healthy planet; the two are absolutely interconnected.
She says sustainable health care is absolutely connected to quality health care, climate care, and universal health coverage.
She adds that we cannot have universal health coverage if the world warms by two degrees
Professor Kayak warned that climate change is the greatest health threat of this century, and that the time to act is now.
She is calling on health professionals to use their voices to drive the transition to sustainable healthcare systems that safeguard both people and the planet.
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