Climate change to rewrite medical training

The global impact of climate change is making its mark on the world of medicine after it was confirmed that future training for doctors in Europe will include more focus on issues such as heat stroke and mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue.

With an increase in extreme weather events and ever higher temperatures being recorded in many countries, the 25-member European Network on Climate and Health Education, or ENCHE, said medical students of the future will need to have increasing awareness of conditions that have previously been largely regionally-specific.

Their training will also have an additional focus on what might be seen as problems that are exacerbated by, or are one step removed from being directly associated with, the consequences of climate change.

"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 exist," said Camille Huser, from Glasgow University, who is the co-chair of ENCHE. "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."

There will also be increased instruction about issues such as so-called green prescribing, which are activities designed to increase patient health and also improve the environment, and measures to encourage people to monitor their own health in a bid to lessen reliance on medical services in the first place.

The announcement came some months after the publication earlier this year of an article in the British Medical Journal, in which the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said climate change and environmental initiatives should become part of medical training programs.

A survey with a particular focus on child health found that of a study of 139 healthcare professionals in 50 countries, 73 percent said they believed climate issues had affected rates of childhood morbidity.

In the United States, the University of Colorado School of Medicine has also encouraged similar thinking among its students.

"Our program is really focused on trying to scale up a climate-savvy health care workforce," said Jay Lemery, director of the school's Climate Change and Health Program. "When we think about climate change and how it affects our health right there, there are so many different things."

The World Health Organization backs the proposed training changes, which will see ENCHE acting as a regional hub of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education, or GCCHE, based at Columbia University in New York, United States.

"Climate change will impact all of us, everywhere, but not equally and not in the same way," said GCCHE Director Cecilia Sorensen. "Regional networks are necessary to help health professionals prevent and respond to climate and health challenges that are unique to the communities where they practice."