While the world continues to battle the ongoing pandemic, a former health official raised alarm over climate change being a public health emergency affecting people globally as well, with air pollution as a major environmental risk to public health.

“Climate change is a public health emergency,” former Health secretary Dr. Esperanza Cabral said on Friday, May 21. “Why? Because it directly affects human health and threatens the stability of the healthcare system.”

The former chief of the Department of Health (DOH) made the statement during a webinar series on climate change organized by the National Academy of Science and Technology, Philippines (NAST PHL), in partnership with The Outstanding Women in Nation’s Service Inc. (TOWNS).

Cabral noted that understanding the effects of climate change on human health and the healthcare delivery system is critical not just for healthcare professionals but for their patients as well.

“Climate change contributes to certain conditions of ill-health and death through extreme temperatures, extreme events such as typhoons and floods, droughts and fires, and pollution not just of the air, but also of water and soil,” she said.

“The diseases they cause, including vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue, water-borne disease such as many types of diarrhea, are leading causes of death and disability in the world,” she added.

Major risk to health

Air pollution, she explained, contributes not just to deaths caused by respiratory diseases but also to deaths from cancers, strokes, and heart diseases. “They are result from the airborne dispersion of hazardous materials and allergens.”

According to Cabral, air pollution is estimated to contribute to over 2 million deaths in the Western Pacific Region alone and over 7 million globally.

While air pollution is the major environmental risk to health, Cabral pointed out that water and soil pollution are also significant environmental threats affecting the health of the people, as water and soil pollution contribute significantly to the emergence of diseases that could lead to death.

Human’s role in climate change

As climate change impacts the people’s health, human activities also play a major role in exacerbating climate change and the loss of ecosystem integrity.

“Human activities are reducing the capacity of the ecosystem to provide their goods such as fresh water, food and medicinal products, and services such as the purification of air, water and soil, and the sequestration of pollutants,” Cabral said.

Moreover, health practices can also cause harm to the environment and contribute to climate change.

“For example, hospitals use a lot of natural resources and produce lots of potential dangerous wastes and pollutants including plastics, infectious electronic and electrical waste,” she said.

Planet is our patient, too

Cabral urged health leaders to evolve the Hippocratic principle of "First do no harm" beyond the immediacy of the doctor-patient relationship to a more global vision of environmental health.

“The planet is our patient, too,” she said. “As the primary sector with the healing mission, the health sector must bond together to address the climate crisis and protect the people.”