Doctors issue health warning ahead of climate conference

COPENHAGEN - Human society faces a global health catastrophe if climate change is not effectively tackled at the United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December, say some of the world's leading doctors.

Calling on medical practitioners everywhere to put pressure on politicians before the meeting, the doctors say that the world's poorest people will be hit first by the health effects of global warming, but add that "no one will be spared".

Their challenge to governments follows a report in May, which said climate change would represent "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century".

Tropical diseases would increase, the study predicted, spelling out how rising temperatures will cause health crises in half a dozen areas: there will be increased problems with food supplies, clean water and sanitation, especially in developing countries.

Also, the migration of people will combine with extreme weather events to make for disastrous conditions in human settlements.

The doctors make their appeal as momentum starts to build for the conference, which will be held in the Danish capital from December 7-18, and during which an attempt will be made to draw up a comprehensive climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Its goal will be worldwide cuts in the emissions of industrial gases, which are causing the atmosphere to warm.

This week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened a climate change summit of world leaders in New York to try to give some impetus to the tortuous pre-conference negotiating process - the draft text of 200 pages already contain 2000 "square brackets": that is, points where the 190 countries taking part disagree.

The doctors' challenge to politicians to sort this out comes in a letter published simultaneously in Britain's two principal health journals, the British Medical Journal and the Lancet.

In the letter, Professor Ian Gilmore, the president of the Royal College of Physicians, joins 17 other doctors' leaders from the US to Australia in saying "there is a real danger that politicians [at Copenhagen] will be indecisive, especially in such turbulent economic times as these.

"Should their response be weak, the results for international health could be catastrophic."

They go on: "Doctors are still seen as respected and independent, largely trusted by their patients and the societies in which they practise ... We call on doctors to demand that their politicians listen to the clear facts that have been identified in relation to climate change and act now to implement strategies that will benefit the health of communities worldwide."

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