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Cause of death: climate
Expert argues climate
change should be written
on death certificates.
Arnagretta Hunter interviewed
by Wade Zaglas
According to ANU experts, deaths
from climate change have been
“substantially under reported” in
Australia’s national health records, and it’s
high time climate change was listed as a
reason for death on official documents.
Indeed, the research contends that
deaths attributed to environmental health
factors is at least 50 times more than what
is officially recorded on death certificates.
Recently published in The Lancet
Planetary Health, figures show that over
the past 11 years, 340 deaths in Australia
were recorded as being due to excessive
heat. But a more in-depth analysis has
dwarfed that figure, finding 36,475 deaths
could have been attributed to excessive
heat brought on by climate change.
“Climate change is a killer, but we don’t
acknowledge it on death certificates,” says
study co‐author Dr Arnagretta Hunter from
ANU Medical School.
Campus Review spoke with Hunter to find
out more about this terrible – some would
say predictable – revelation.
CR: Why do you think the medical fraternity
has been uneasy about making a direct link
between climate change and mortality?
The medical fraternity has long understood
that elements of the environment will
determine the health and wellbeing of
patients. When we look at the practice of
medicine, we all understand the biology
of medicine, and we’re very good at
framing what occurs to people through
the context of diagnoses, things like heart
disease and lung disease. Certainly, we’re
not arguing that that be removed. Those
things are important and a central part of
how we evaluate health data, but we have
also appreciated, particularly in the last 20
years, that there are other determinants that
influence health and wellbeing.
There’s tremendous literature on the
social determinants of health. Where you
live, how much education you have, how
much money you make, who you live with,
what sort of work you do – all these things
influence your health and wellbeing. In fact,
we collect that in our health data.
What we don’t collect in health data in
Australia, and what we think really needs
to be looked at, are these environmental
determinants of health.
And it’s not just about climate change.
It’s simply that some of the environmental
factors we live with influence health and
wellbeing, and that includes issues like heat,
floods, droughts, problems with cold, and
so on.
If you go to the Australian Institute of
Health and Welfare database, and you
look at the way in which Australian health
data is collected and collated, it’s an
extraordinary repository. You can find out
the rates of heart disease and different
cancers and different forms of treatment
and hospitalisations and all sorts of amazing
data across the Australian healthcare sector.
If you’re talking to a population of people
who live in rural Australia, I think many of
them would be surprised to know there’s
very little analysis done on droughts. If
you put droughts or heat events into that
database, very little data comes up. That’s
the crux of our argument: some of these
environmental factors have a profound effect
on our health and wellbeing.
Linking it back to climate change, as we
see temperatures rise – which is a particular
problem in northern Australia – we may
see a significant mortality effect of that for
our populations who are living under those
circumstances.
You say climate change is the single greatest
health threat we face globally, even after
20