[ad_1]
About a yr in the past, I used to be declared cancer-free after 4 months of chemotherapy at Windfall St. John’s Well being Middle in Santa Monica, Calif. I had been identified with low-grade B cell non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. This was not my first encounter with most cancers. I’d had breast most cancers a lot of years prior, which was handled with radiation after which a full mastectomy. I understand I’m fortunate. I had caring, attentive medical doctors and nurses who saved my life. I additionally understand how a lot progress has been made in most cancers analysis and I’m deeply grateful.
But regardless of that, most cancers has turn out to be epidemic. Roughly 40% of individuals within the U.S. will develop most cancers and over 1.96 million new instances have been anticipated to be identified in 2023, in response to the Nationwide Most cancers Institute.
I’m a most cancers survivor but additionally a local weather activist and I’m very conscious of the connection between the setting and well being—particularly most cancers. The identical fossil fuels which might be driving the local weather disaster are driving this well being disaster. The Environmental Safety Company retains discovering cancer-causing chemical substances derived from fossil fuels—resembling dioxins, benzene, and naphthalene—within the air, in our water, our meals, our furnishings, our clothes, the utensils we prepare dinner with…. They’re additionally in our our bodies. These poisons are even discovered within the umbilical cords of new child kids.
A Harvard Middle for Public Well being research discovered fossil fuel-related air air pollution brought about over eight million deaths globally in 2018—that’s extra in a single yr than died from COVID-19 in three years. It’s a disaster. Oil, fuel, and coal are making the planet sick and making folks and different animals sick.
Well being care establishments have been heroic on the subject of curing folks. But it surely’s time now for them to maneuver upstream and assist forestall the hurt within the first place. In any case, that’s the physician’s creed: first do no hurt.
So why, in response to the environmental group Stand.earth, have the 4 large healthcare pension funds within the U.S.—the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, HCA Healthcare and Ascension Well being—invested greater than $4.5 billion {dollars} in fossil gas firms?
Our well being care system is chargeable for nearly 9% of the nation’s greenhouse fuel emissions due to the system’s reliance on fossil fuels to run its services and tools, the petrochemical plastics used to make its units, the anesthetic gases they use within the working room, and the meals and medicines it purchases.
Gary Cohen, co-founder of Well being Care With out Hurt, made me hopeful when he informed me that the well being care group—led often by its nurses—has made large modifications earlier than. Once they discovered that medical waste incinerators have been a number one contributor of cancer-causing dioxin emissions within the U.S., hundreds of incinerators have been closed and hospitals discovered how one can cut back their waste, reuse and recycle what they may, and use safer waste-treatment applied sciences to dispose of probably poisonous supplies. When research started to indicate that damaged mercury thermometers have been contributing to harmful mercury ranges in water and fish, the well being sector phased out mercury thermometers and located safer options, not solely in our nation however all around the globe.
Well being Care With out Hurt has pushed hospitals and well being care facilities to decide to plans to attain web zero emissions within the close to future, and hundreds extra around the globe are on the identical path. Greater than 75 governments have dedicated to design low-carbon and climate-resilient well being techniques, together with the U.S.
The well being care group and hospitals particularly ought to lead the remainder of society in addressing this intersectional well being and local weather crises, which the World Well being Group calls “one of many biggest well being threats for humanity.”
There are some large steps that must be taken. Hospitals must embrace guaranteeing a wholesome setting with the identical heroism they embrace curing most cancers. They’ll begin to run hospitals on renewable vitality and to purchase provides (together with meals) from native sources to scale back carbon from transportation emissions. That may additionally assist communities by supporting native sustainable growth. They’ll additionally cut back single-use plastics, eradicate polluting anesthetic gasses, electrify their automobile fleets, transfer to extra telemedicine, and waste much less medicine and different provides. Well being care is 17% of the whole U.S. economic system—consider the influence if the sector absolutely dedicated to those renovations.
Local weather-smart well being care is preventative medication on a grand scale. Give it some thought: We will’t have wholesome folks on a sick planet. Thanks, well being care establishments for serving to me heal. And be a part of me, well being care establishments, in serving to the planet heal.
Components of this piece are tailored from remarks Fonda delivered at a Metropolis of Hope occasion in 2023.
[ad_2]
Discussion about this post