H5N1

Bushfires expose weaknesses in Australia's health system

Via The Lancet: Bushfires expose weaknesses in Australia's health system. Excerpt:

Australia is in the grip of unprecedented bushfires that have affected every state across the country. The threat to lives, homes, and wildlife has already resulted in more than 20 deaths and 2000 homes lost, millions of acres burned, and up to 1 billion animals dead. 

While Australia has one of the world's most robust health-care systems, the crisis has not only left doctors unprepared to deal with the health impacts of climate change, but it has also revealed that the health system was not fully equipped to handle the massive humanitarian impact such a crisis would have on communities. 

At the time of writing, dozens of fires continued to burn out of control across large swaths of the country, exposing people to toxic smoke and putting firefighters and rescue workers in grave danger of serious injury and death. For weeks on end, smoke haze has blanketed parts of the country, including Sydney and Canberra, where millions of people live. Air quality in Canberra—which made headlines around the world—reached more than 22 times the hazardous level set by WHO. In Sydney, some suburbs have experienced air quality more than ten times the hazardous limit. 

Arnagretta Hunter, a cardiologist in Canberra, told The Lancet she had seen an increase in patients, particularly those with respiratory problems and people with underlying lung and heart problems. She said there had also been an increase in infections including urinary tract infections and skin infections, likely to be attributed to fine particulate matter exposure. 

Hunter said she had been giving advice such as to stay inside and avoid physical activity, but that “I don't think we have any real idea” of the health impacts of such exposure. 

“In Australia, we are used to having clean air; air pollution is not an issue. Our health brains do not work like this”, she said. “We have a robust health system and we are good at providing high-level health to our population [but] the planning for the health impacts of climate change has been almost non-existent. Our system was not prepared for this. Hospitals are working in disaster mode. I think we will be able to measure the impact of this crisis in life expectancy in the next 12 months.” 

Her concern follows the Australian Medical Association (AMA) warning that prolonged exposure to toxic smoke could affect the health of many Australians. “The length and density of smoke exposure is a new and possibly fatal health risk”, AMA President Tony Bartone said in a statement. “With denser smoke haze and longer periods that people endure smoke inhalation, there is a much higher risk that previously healthy people will face developing serious illness.” 

Meanwhile, Ewen McPhee, immediate past president of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine and a general practitioner (GP) based in central Queensland, said a lack of preparation for the health impact of the bushfires was leaving rural communities vulnerable. “There was no preparation for impaired air quality, with the federal government only now releasing funds to source P2 masks in the millions for rural people”, he said.

Australia bushfires: Sydney air quality hits 1631

I can hardly believe the Oakdale Sydney South-west, Australia Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index for 7:00 a.m. Tuesday, January 7:

"Hazardous" is defined as 300-500; this reading more than triples the theoretical worst. Long-term health consequences will be felt in southeast Australia for decades to come.

Bushfires: Australia weather forecast, Saturday, January 4

Via the Bureau of Meteorology:

Bushfires: 'Air pollution in NSW is a public health emergency'

A statement from the Climate and Health Alliance, signed by 28 Australian health groups: Joint Statement: Air pollution in NSW is a public health emergency.

Smoke from bushfires has produced air pollution of up to 11 times the base ‘hazardous’ level in parts of Sydney and New South Wales. High levels of air pollution are expected to continue. 

There is no safe level of air pollution. The higher the level of pollution, the more hazardous the risks to health. Bushfire smoke is particularly hazardous because of the high levels of tiny particles (PM2.5). 

Babies, young children and those who are elderly or already experience chronic respiratory or cardiovascular disease are at higher risk, as are the socially and economically marginalised who may not have access to air conditioning or air purifiers.  

Air pollution is linked to diseases throughout life: including premature births, low birth weight babies, impaired lung development in children, asthma, heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. 

The levels of air pollution in NSW in recent weeks, and in the immediate future, remain hazardous to people’s health.  

This is a public health emergency  

Governments have a responsibility to protect the people they represent. 

Both the Federal and State Government of NSW must prioritise action to help reduce the risks to people’s health arising from hazardous air pollution from the bushfires that continue to burn relentlessly across the state.  

We call on Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to demonstrate the leadership this public health emergency demands, and to implement measures to help alleviate the health and climate crisis.  

Authorities are encouraging people in affected areas to avoid exercise and stay indoors with windows and doors closed and, if they have medication for respiratory conditions, to use their medications as directed.  

In accordance with advice from the NSW Department of Health, if you are particularly susceptible to bushfire smoke, consider staying with a friend or relative whose house has clean indoor air or leaving the area for a cleaner environment.  

Protecting health requires climate action  

Climate change is worsening many extreme weather events such as serious bushfire weather, which is having devastating impacts on human health. 

The air pollution events resulting from bushfires will become more and more frequent and are a result of climate change. Our governments must act quickly to rapidly and deeply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which we know are driving climate change. 

This moment calls for political leadership  

All of our political leaders must acknowledge the health and environmental emergency of climate change, and step up and commit to urgent climate action by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with what the science demands.  

In addition to responding to this public health emergency, we call on Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Premier Gladys Berejiklian to lead action on climate change to protect our health. 

This must include a multi-portfolio response involving Federal and State governments and the development of a National Strategy on Climate, Health and Well-being. This will ensure a nationally coordinated approach to tackling the worsening health impacts of climate change, and that health service planning includes climate change preparedness to respond to the increasing demand for health services from extreme weather events, such as bushfires and heatwaves.

Australia bushfires: Maintain your rage

Via The Tyee, a personal article by my colleague Ian Gill: Maintain Your Rage. Excerpt:

A few minutes before midnight on the last day of the year, Pacific daylight time, I began to cry.

I’m a purportedly “grown man” and I’m not easily moved to tears, but as is the way with emotions, there wasn’t much I could do when the tears came but to wipe them away and trust that they would stop, which eventually they did.  

I cried for my country, for my Lucky Country, the wide brown land, the Fatal Shore — for Australia. I cried because when I woke up under the Tuscan sun just before 9 a.m. after our New Year’s revels (i.e. just before midnight on Canada’s West Coast, where I live), I looked at my phone and was informed that Australia was on fire as never before. 

I know, the fires have been going on for weeks now. I’ve tracked them as best I can from half a world away because my eldest son relocated to Sydney a few months ago to, among other things, escape the foul air of Shanghai and the foul system that passes for government in China; I also have a sister and nephews and their young families in Adelaide, where I was born. They are all okay, in that they still have roofs over their heads and, well, they aren’t dead. 

But what was different on New Year’s Day were fresh accounts from the front of thousands of Australians being herded onto beaches on the south coast of New South Wales — iconic Australian beaches now serving as the ironic last and only refuges from the pent-up fury of fires that cannot be, will not be controlled.

Australia braces for ‘more damage, more destruction’ as all visitors to southeast coast urged to evacuate worsening bushfires

Via the South China Morning Post, a Bloomberg/AFP report: Australia braces for ‘more damage, more destruction’ as all visitors to southeast coast urged to evacuate worsening bush fires. Excerpt:

Thousands of tourists holidaying on the south coast of Australia have been told to evacuate before another heatwave over the weekend expected to intensify deadly wildfires sweeping through the region. 

In an unprecedented appeal, the Rural Fire Service said anyone in the southeastern tip of New South Wales state should get out in the next two days with more extreme weather expected on the weekend. 

The 230km (143-mile) stretch from Batemans Bay down to the Victoria state border has been ravaged by fires this week, as infernos turned the sky blood red and rained down embers and ash on communities. 

“We cannot overstate the potential risk of more damage and more destruction,” RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told Sky News Thursday. “There is a big effort between today and tomorrow to get as many people out of the south coast as we can.” 

Saturday is forecast to bring gusting winds and temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). That weather will create dangerous fire conditions that officials say will be as bad – if not worse – than Tuesday, Australia’s deadliest day of fires in a months-long bushfire crisis. 

NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance told public broadcaster ABC it would be the “largest evacuation of people out of the region ever”, with thousands preparing to leave ahead of another “terrible” day of fires.

NSW Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers said firefighters were unable to extinguish or even control the raging blazes. 

“The message is we’ve got so much fire in that area, we have no capacity to contain these fires,” he told ABC.

“We just need to make sure that people are not in front of them.” 

At least seven people have been killed on the south coast of New South Wales earlier this week and hundreds of properties destroyed. Thousands of locals and tourists have been stranded in the rural, forested region at the peak of the summer holiday season. 

Fitzsimmons said the main highway to the north was now mostly open, and as power was restored, gas stations would be able to dispense fuel to motorists. 

Isolated communities in Victoria remain cut-off by road, including the township of Mallacoota, where some 4,000 people were forced to shelter on the beach or escape by boat as wildfires swept through. 

Navy ships and military aircraft have been deployed alongside emergency crews to provide humanitarian relief and assess the damage.

Military helicopters and ships have been scrambled to bring in supplies and for potential evacuations if roads can’t be reopened. 

The scale of the crisis, played out in real-time on social media as people posted footage and images of raging fire-fronts bearing down on communities, has shocked Australia and fuelled an emotive debate about the impact of global warming in the world’s driest inhabited continent. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government is coming under sustained criticism from environmentalists and the opposition after repeatedly downplaying any links to climate change, and for not taking stronger steps to curb emissions.

Australia bushfires: The smothering of Canberra

Via the Air Quality Index site, the current AQI for Delhi, capital of India:

And the AQI for Canberra, capital of Australia:

NSW bushfires: RFS confirm more than 900 homes destroyed

Via The Sydney Morning Herald: NSW fires: RFS confirm more than 900 homes destroyed. Excerpt:

Thousands of holidaymakers between Ulladulla and Culburra Beach including Jervis Bay on the NSW South Coast have been warned that the escalating bushfires threaten to trap them. 

NSW Rural Fire Service is warning that spot fires from stray embers could impact the Broulee and Batemans Bay regions further south, with residents and holidaymakers being told that the Princes Highway may be affected by fires on Tuesday with the Kings Highway already shutdown.  

On the South Coast, three blazes – the Currowan, Charleys Forest and Clyde Mountain fires – have joined, forming a large fire that has burnt through more than 257,000 hectares, stretching from near Batemans Bay to near Nowra. 

East of Albury, a Rural Fire Service volunteer firefighter died on Monday evening, with two others suffering burns while battling the Green Valley fire, which remains at emergency level as of 9pm.  

It is believed that their truck rolled after it was hit by extreme winds. A second vehicle working in the area was also blown over, with one RFS volunteer also taken to hospital 

"Just heartbreaking," Premier Gladys Berejiklian tweeted. "A brave firefighter has lost their life protecting the community east of Albury. Words fail at times like this." 

This marks the third RFS volunteer to lose their life during this catastrophic fire season, after Andrew O'Dwyer and Geoffrey Keaton were killed in a motor vehicle accident on the Green Wattle Creek fireground south-west of Sydney in the week before Christmas.  

That fire continues to burn, and there are fears it could jump containment lines near Colo Vale.

Climate change, crime and political chaos: A deadly mix in Honduras dengue epidemic

Via The New York Times: Climate Change, Crime and Political Chaos: A Deadly Mix in Honduras Dengue Epidemic. Excerpt:

CHOLOMA, Honduras — More than 400 people died this year as one of the worst dengue epidemics on record swept through Central America — a type of outbreak that some scientists and public health officials are warning is likely to become more frequent and more widespread because of climate change.  

But while climate change is threatening to increase the spread of dengue worldwide by expanding the range of the mosquitoes that carry the virus, the disease has already found an especially fertile breeding ground in Honduras, for reasons that go beyond the environment.  

In Honduras, which accounted for more than 40 percent of the dengue deaths in Central America this year, according to the Pan American Health Organization, the effects of climate change have been compounded by government dysfunction, political tumult and public apathy. 

Dengue has hit the country hard. This year, it had more than 107,000 cases of the viral disease — more than 13 times the number recorded last year — and at least 175 deaths. In 2018, only three people in Honduras died from the disease, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

Honduras’s notorious criminality has worsened matters, too, as public health teams, already stretched thin by budget cuts and a lack of trained personnel, have been blocked by gangs from entering some of the most severely afflicted neighborhoods to educate residents and fumigate against mosquito infestations.  

Dengue is transmitted to humans by a type of mosquito called Aedes, which thrives in urban areas of the world’s tropical and subtropical regions. Tens of millions of cases occur each year in more than 100 countries, and symptoms may include fever, internal bleeding and shock. Inadequately treated, the illness can quickly kill. 

In Honduras, health officials trace the start of the current epidemic to the fall of 2018. The number of incidents then rose sharply during the first half of 2019, hitting a peak this summer before falling off as the year ended. A nationwide health emergency declared in July by the administration of President Juan Orlando Hernández remains in effect.  

The outbreak struck during a time of political turbulence in Honduras, with violent street protests against Mr. Hernández and calls for his ouster. Some of the protests have been driven by fears the government planned to privatize the health and education sectors. 

The nation also suffers from high murder rates and widespread poverty, which have combined to drive tens of thousands of Hondurans in recent years to emigrate, with many trying to make it to the United States.  

The dengue outbreak has met little resistance from a public health system gutted by budget cuts and pervasive corruption, analysts and officials said.  

“It’s a collapsed system, an inefficient system,” said Ismael Zepeda, an economist with Fosdeh, a research group in Tegucigalpa, the capital.

Australia: Governments must act on public health emergency from bushfire smoke, medical groups say

Via the Australia edition of The Guardian: Governments must act on public health emergency from bushfire smoke, medical groups say. Excerpt:

Some 22 groups representing health and medical professionals in Australia have issued a joint call to act on a “public health emergency” caused by smoke from the catastrophic bushfire season in New South Wales.  

In Sydney and others areas of NSW communities have been exposed to air pollution up to 11 times worse than “hazardous” levels. 

The group has produced a joint statement calling for political leadership while repeating a call for a national strategy to combat the health impacts of climate change.  

Dr Kate Charlesworth, a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which signed the statement, said: “Climate-related health effects are having the most impact on our most vulnerable: babies, children, the elderly and people with pre-existing disease. There is no safe level of air pollution.”

“To protect health, we need to shift rapidly away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner, healthier and safer forms of energy.” 

Among the 22 groups that signed the statement are the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, Public Health Association of Australia, Australian College of Nursing, Australian Association of Social Workers and Lung Foundation Australia. 

The statement says the federal and NSW governments must “prioritise action to help reduce the risks to people’s health arising from hazardous air pollution”.  

Fiona Armstrong, executive of the Climate and Health Alliance, said: “This is a public health emergency.” She added: “Climate change is going to get much worse and we will see more and more of these events.”  

Dr Lai Heng Foong, of Doctors for the Environment Australia, which has also signed the statement, said: “Pollution from bushfire smoke remains hazardous to people, in the short term and also the long-term.”  

Many of the groups that have signed the statement are also pushing for Australia to respond to the health impacts of climate change. 

Mark Brooke, CEO of Lung Foundation Australia, said a national strategy was needed. 

“Climate change and air quality significantly contribute to poor lung health, increased health and economic burden, disability and death,” he said. 

“If we want to prevent the worst air pollution from bushfire smoke, one of the best things our governments can do, aside from fuel reduction burns, is to set stronger and better standards for everyday air quality.”