Trainee doctors to receive more training about malaria, dengue heatstroke, and the role of global warming in health.
In the face of the climate crisis, mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue will become a more significant portion of the curriculum at medical schools across Europe.
Announcing the formation of the European Network on Climate & Health Education (Enche), administrators of medical schools stated that future doctors would also receive more training on how to detect and treat heatstroke and be expected to consider the climate change impact of treatment such as inhalers for asthma.
25 medical schools from various countries, including the UK, Belgium, and France, led by the University of Glasgow, will integrate lessons on climate change into the education of over 10,000 students.
Dr Camille Huser of Glasgow University, also a network co-chair, stated: “The doctors of the future will see a different array of presentations and diseases that they are not seeing now. They need to be aware of that so they can recognize them.”
Climate change puts excessive pressure on health services as Europe experiences its hottest summer this year.
Disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes are expanding their range and have discovered new areas due to the changes in temperature and rainfall patterns. Chronic diseases such as heart and lung conditions, diabetes and mental illness, and cancer can be affected by factors such as air pollution and extreme weather.
According to Huser, the role of climate in teaching at medical schools varies considerably and often consists of just a single lecture or module.
Huster stated: “Climate change … doesn’t necessarily create a whole new range of diseases that we haven’t seen before but it exacerbates the ones that do exis.,”
“Diabetes, for example, is not something that people link to climate change at all, but the symptoms and complications become more frequent and worse for people who live in a world where the climate has changed.”
Huser added that antimicrobial resistance, in which pathogens change so current drugs are no longer able to treat them effectively, is caused by climate breakdown and should be reflected in the teaching.
She also claims that encouraging them to monitor their health had “huge benefits for them personally”; however, it would also “reduce emissions if they require less input from the health system”.
She continued that many people didn’t realize the health sector was responsible for as much more greenhouse gas emissions than the airline industry. “When you fly somewhere, you feel very guilty, but when you go to the doctor, you don’t feel guilty.”
Students will be taught how management changes have an impact. Inhalers used by asthmatic people also emit greenhouse gases, so controlling the condition will go a long way to help the patients and reduce inhalers. Patients suitable for dry powder inhalers will be switched there since they release fewer greenhouse gases.
Network leaders stated that this is the first joint attempt to educate undergraduate medical students, while there has been a piecemeal initiative at the institutional levels.
The network is also set to influence bodies responsible for national curricula, like the General Medical Council in the UK so that the climate crisis becomes mandatory for all doctors.
Prof Iain McInnes, also of Glasgow University, Huser’s co-chair, stated the network’s goal was “building the conversation into medical curricula so that the doctors of the future are literate in this conversation, they don’t feel it’s a campaign item.
“This is as pivotal and critical to their thinking as it is to manage obesity, smoking and other environmental challenges. It is simply part of the DNA of being a doctor.”
The initiative was backed by the World Health Organization (WHO), along with private healthcare and pharmaceutical businesses like AstraZeneca, Bupa, Novo Nordisk, Roche, GSK, Novartis, and Sanofi as members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative Health Systems Task Force, a public-private collaboration working on the decarbonization of the healthcare.
Enche is set to be a regional hub of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (GCCHE) at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York.
Director of the GCCHE, Prof Cecilia Sorensen, stated: “Climate change will impact all of us, everywhere but not equally and not in the same way. Regional networks are necessary to help health professionals prevent and respond to climate and health challenges which are unique to the communities where they practise.”
