Climate change effects to be part of med school syllabus

 Climate change effects to be part of med school syllabus

• Mumbai: In a landmark move, the health effects of cli- mate change will soon be included in all medical courses across the country.

• The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is working with various medical councils to introduce concepts such as rising heat and damaging air quality and their effects in medical education and the training of medical personnel in India.

• The NCDC has roped in the National Medical Council, the dental council, AY- USH, the nursing council and the pharmacy council, among others, for this purpose. Medical schools will also have to teach students about environmental health- a de- cades-old plea that has un- fortunately been ignored so far.

• "Today, a patient is asked if he smokes or consumes alcohol. There is nothing to re- late his ill-health to external environmental factors. Our goal is to address the reality that our altering climatic conditions are affecting people's health, and our medical professionals need to recognize this," said a senior officer from NCDC's Centre for Environmental & Occupational Health, Climate Change and Health.

• "We understand that the medical curricula are burs- ting at its seams, but we can- not side-line the need to train our students to think about the impact of polluted environment on the human body," he added.

• Experts at the two-day- long national workshop on heat wave 2023 at Indian Institute of Technology Bom-bay that concluded on Tues- day gave the example of the Ahmedabad model in this context. Last year, Ahmedabad became the first city in India to develop a 'health action plan', which includes an early warning system and a preparedness plan.

• Highlighting the Ahmedabad model, Mahaveer Golechha, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar, said that while looking at the all-causes mortality data, public health researchers found a rise in deaths in May. "Why does India not have at system of putting up its IPD and OPD data of hospitals? Unless we acknowledge the reality that climate change is affecting the health of our population, we cannot devise corrective steps," said Golechha, who rued the fact that there is no system in India to report heat-related deaths.

• Former DG-IMD Ajit Tyagi said that 2022 was a "red- flag year" as every part of the globe was affected by global warming. He said a relatively new phenomenon of "marine heat waves" has not got enough attention from the various agencies although marine life and coastal regions could be adversely affected. "Temperatures have gone up four-fold in the past ten years," he added.