Heatwave health crisis
Posted on: Sun 15 Oct 2017
With recent unseasonal weather, health professionals fear an early start to warmer weather, prompting them to call for greater extreme heat preparedness to reduce illness, and deaths, and to lessen the pressure on the health care system. Doctors for the Environment is an independent organisation of medical doctors protecting health through care of the environment. A Medical Journal of Australia paper, produced by heat treatment experts from Doctors for the Environment, says that Australia’s larger cities have experienced occasions where health services have been severely stretched due to surges in illness and deaths during repeated heatwaves. To find out more, Barometer’s Des Lawrence spoke to one of the report’s authors, Dr Mark Monaghan, emergency physician of 17 years, and member of Doctors for the Environment.
Image: flickr – methodshop (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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