SemFYC publishes the guide ‘What to do and not to do in Planetary Health’.
The Planetary Health Group of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC) publishes the guide ‘Do’s and Don’ts in Planetary Health‘, which addresses how Primary Care professionals can include the perspective of planetary health in the day to day of the consultation. The objective of this initiative is to make prescriptions to their patients that help preserve the environment and combat the climatic emergency.
It is estimated that each year they die in Europe 1.4 million people for causes related to the environment, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO). In this sense, and as the doctors affirm, factors like global warmingpoor air quality or the increase in pests aggravate pathologies such as cardiovascularlas respiratory waves gastrointestinal.
The coordinator of the Planetary Health Group of the semFYC, Anna Fernandez, defends that “small individual changes can lead to great collective changes”. “Primary Care doctors are often an example for patients and, by being close and trustworthy, we can induce changes in them”, she added.
“It’s important that we do recommendations considering the planetary healthsince the harmful effects of factors such as poor air quality or the increase in pests are already reflected in the day to day of the consultation and lead to many health problems”, adds Anna Fernández.
“Drugs have an impact on the environment”
Between the recommendations included in the guide are aspects such as advising a local diet that avoids those packaged with plastic y ultra-processed; practice physical activity in nature; or commuting on foot or by bicycle. In addition, this publication emphasizes the fact that all drugs have an impact on the environment due to the carbon footprint of their production, storage, packaging, transport and waste management.
In this line, “other than inhaled anestheticspressurized pMDI inhalers also have quite an impact due to the propellant they contain”, explains Fernández, who adds that “the idea is not remove this drugbut to decide, counting on the patient, the option of changing it for another that preserves the environment more”.
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