According to Montreal family doctor Claudel Petrin-Desrosiers, climate change is an all-encompassing risk multiplier.
Céline says it raises the potential for hazards, from threatening essential health determinants, like air quality and access to water and food, to tick-borne Lyme disease and exacerbating seasonal allergies.
Doctors Say Canada's Health System Is Not Ready For New Reality
Petrin-Desrosiers, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment's Quebec chapter, is one of the medical professionals.
He claims that Canada's healthcare system is unprepared for the worsening effects of climate change.
Finola Hackett, a locum physician who works in rural communities across southern Alberta, said to ignore the climate crisis concerning health will be very expensive, not just in dollars but also in lives.
He said acting now has the potential to save lives. "That is motivating enough for us to do the work," Petrin-Desrosiers said.
Petrin-Desrosiers and Hackett are the lead authors of a policy brief on Canada, which was released last week alongside a global report on health and climate change produced by the Lancet medical journal.
The heat dome that will form over British Columbia in the summer of 2021 is one example used in the Lancet report to highlight the health risks of global warming.
The peer-reviewed report says the heat dome, which caused over 600 deaths in B.C, would not have been possible without the influence of climate change.
The Canadian policy brief says the healthcare system has the potential to increase resilience to extreme heat such as this and other climate-related health risks. But it is far from ready, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic.
It says heat waves may likely increase the number of emergency room visits by 10-15 percent, further straining healthcare capacity and reducing the quality of care.
Petrin-Desrosiers and Hackett both expressed concern about the effects of climate change on mental health, citing evidence of an increase in post-traumatic stress disorder following extreme weather events such as flooding.
This is troubling, says Petrin-Desrosiers, because there are long waiting lists for mental health services nationwide and limited access to care through the public system.
Global warming is already having an impact on Canadians' health. If nothing is done, it will continue to cause illness, injury, and death, according to Health Canada's assessment of climate change and health, published earlier this year.
