Stockholm in my garden

 

Zoom and teams have really connected us globally. I may live near Heathrow but did not need to jump on a plane to a lecture in Stockholm. Sat with a cup of tea in my garden was able to join the Gordon Goodman memorial lecture.  The key speaker was Sir Andy Haines, Professor from the School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine ....actually speaking from London..so no plane needed for him too. The topic: 

Climate change & health - developing evidence for action. The presentation was worryingly impressive and reinforced all my exploration of the subject with Medact and Doctors for Climate zoom meetings too.. you can learn more in the link and from Future Earth The slides in the ppt well put together with a brilliant lecture.  Some good references too. 

One reference was looking at the effects of particles from wildfires on health causing inflammatory responses in the body. Xu et al 2020 Wildfires particles oxidative compounds. Sciencebrief.org 

I can't trackdown this link but the author appears to have written in the Journal of Thoracic Disease on google search there are others studies over recent years looking in great detail on wildfires, patterns and effects.

There are some good references from PNAS journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...USA

One of the panelists seen in my photo above was Maria Neira, Director Environment, Climate change & Health WHO..she said something very powerful that impressed me! 

****Roar of the Health Professionals**** that we can influence the public & the  politicians as we are expert at clinical evidence gathering, presentation & publication of that evidence. 

Yes we are on the frontline of seeing and managing our patients. A point I had put in our Medact meeting earlier in the week. We have credibility to share the facts, the observations, action planning and data. 

#GGlecture #climatechange #humanhealth  there is so much more to share with you..I will build on this post as I explore more. When recording available will Link it in.