After another record-breaking year, climate change has become a permanent “hot” topic. As surgeons and anesthesiologists, we recognize that the same people most at risk from climate change have limited access to critical anesthesia and surgical care. Surgical and surgical leaders must address climate change and change our path to global justice.
A Different Guilt
New ways to burn fossil fuels have led to major advances in technology, lifestyle, and medicine. But these benefits are concentrated in high-income countries (HICs), while low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are the most concentrated. pay the price of combustion byproducts. The United States has contributed significantly to carbon dioxide (CO2) to space (20 percent of the total worldwide) are still among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. On the other hand, LMICs contribute the least to global warming but they have few things to endure, and adapt to the problems caused by climate change.
Importantly, the global health industry is a major environmental contributor; if it were a country, the industry would be fifth in the production of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the world. Surgical care and anesthesia especially high output components of health care. Surgical care is often energy-intensive and produces large amounts of waste, with air conditioners alone having twice the global warming potential of CO.2.
Unequal Results
Climate events, such as droughts, hurricanes, and extreme heat, threaten everyone’s health, but the effects are not felt equally. Low-income people and people of color are more likely to live in communities that have them high levels of air pollution, limited access to medical careand poor houses, among other dangerous things. As a result, these people are at greater risk of the health effects of climate change, including lung and infectious diseases, heat-related illnessesand lack of food.
Climate change will increase the burden of surgical disease, from increased trauma to worse pregnancy outcomes to a higher burden of infectious diseases and possible surgical complications. However, until 2015, five billion people did not have access to surgical treatment, especially in LMIC countries. Big storms, rising seas, and extreme heat all threat to available surgical, obstetric, and anesthesia (SOA) supplies and present unique challenges in developing operational systems ready for climate change.
Adjustments and Mitigation Methods
Equality of surgery means ensuring that there is equal access to timely and safe delivery of essential SOA care to everyone in the community, regardless of social status or ability to pay. In the context of an unstable future climate, global operating systems should include:
- adaptive strategies to prepare surgical equipment and personnel for an unstable climate, especially in LMICs, and
- sustainable technology is a way to reducing the carbon footprint of surgical care.
The change begins with the careful selection of the location, design, and capacity of new power generation equipment to ensure long-term reliability in the face of the risks of climate change, including sea level rise and natural disasters threatening the power grid. Existing infrastructure will also need to pay for energy efficiency and climate protection. Our surgical staff also needs better training in the development of surgical diseases related to climate change, from serious injuries after a major storm to pregnancy problems at high temperature.
Like renewable energy lowers the cost compared to fossil fuels, LMICs can burn down the cost-cutting measures by developing operations that avoid dependence on fossil fuels. Here, there is an opportunity to change the current global mindset in making LMICs leaders in the green surgery community. Realizing such opportunities may require financial support from HICs.
In addition, in HICs, we cannot ignore the distractions of the operating rooms where we provide life-saving surgeries. more carbon dioxide and contribute to the challenges of climate change. We need to quickly reduce our emissions by using good methods from green books surgery including energy-efficient HVAC and lighting systems, eco-friendly solutions, and reusable products. To his credit, efforts to make surgeries permanent have recently been encouraged frequent sacrifices from the country’s policy makers to help reducing health care-related emissions.
Policy Programs
The National Obstetric Anesthesia Planning (NSOAP) A strategy and framework to support the development of surgery in LMICs. When policy makers develop such plans, they must integrate all climate change adaptation and mitigation measures into all six areas of planning: infrastructure, workforce, project management, information management, governance, and finance.
Some communities in LMICs are already developing green solutions. Examples include a hospital in Rwanda that uses fresh air from the surrounding area and positive outcomes in primary care settings with primary or backup solar photovoltaic power across Chhattisgarh, India. But a future value and delayed benefits Sustainable development represents a prohibitive financial challenge for many LMICs. This problem is exacerbated by the shortage of foreign investment in LMICs – currently 5 to 10 times less than what is needed, according to United Nations Environment Program report for 2021. In addition, despite the obvious health effects, almost no climate change funding has been directed at global health.
The adaptation of climate change to the global shortage of surgical supplies highlights the interdependence of global challenges. To this end, climate change funding (including Green Climate Fund) should be available to LMICs to support the implementation of global green initiatives. NSOAP can strengthen this funding call by clearly including climate change and mitigation language.
But climate change policymaking and operational equity can no longer be done in silos. The main drivers of climate change policy include National adaptation plans (NAPs) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and national contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Climate Accord. NAPs are national policies that address climate change. NDCs serve as external indicators of climate change targets, which often emphasize emission reduction targets and include measures to combat climate change. When optimized, these two processes should encouraging each other. Surgical leaders worldwide should advocate for surgical interventions to be targeted for change and reduction measures in NAPs and NDCs.
Finally, we must pursue global justice and climate change awareness. The delivery of surgical care is highly sensitive and affects this issue. With the overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence of the intersection of surgery, climate change, and public health impacts, implementing effective policies is a political issue. Therefore, surgical and surgical leaders around the world have a responsibility to agree on the principles of climate change in order to meet the challenges of global surgery in the face of an unstable future climate.
