Gary Cohen is an advocate and pioneer in environmental health movement for the last thirty years and was recently named Champion of Change in the category of Climate and Health by the U.S. White House. The award is given to leaders who are making the link between climate and health and helping the health sector lead the effort to reduce their contributions to climate change and prepare their communities for threats to health related to climate change.
Cohen is in the country for the Green Hospitals Asia Conference sponsored by HCWH. On its 10th year in the Philippines, HCWH-Asia is credited for the documentation of the 2004 nationwide measles vaccination which established the Philippines as the first country to deal with waste from a national vaccination program without resorting to incinerator or open burning. The documentation supported the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999 which bans burning of regular and medical wastes.
In 2008, HCWH-Asia together with the Health department worked to gradually phase-out mercury devices in all Philippine health care facilities and institutions, again, another first in the Southeast Asia region.
In a letter sent to Sen. Legarda, Cohen said that the Philippines could further push environmentally responsible health care toward other important directions. As an energy intensive industry, health care in the course of their delivering vital health care to patients, also create significant carbon footprint. Hospitals use twice as much energy per square foot as traditional office space.
“With the Philippines experiencing extreme weather events now and in the years to come, the health care system will once again be called to respond to various climate change-related illnesses,” said Cohen.
“We have come to a point when we need to address climate change issue from a public health perspective,” said Cohen. “The Philippines has one of the best climate change laws as pointed out by the UN1. Like many laws around the globe however, we often encounter stumbling blocks. Hospitals and health professionals can help speed up implementation by leading not only climate change adaptation—treating the many victims of climate-related diseases—but also through mitigation—by modeling energy efficiency, and the use of clean, renewable energy, and by raising their voice for clean, renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels such as coal.” explained Cohen. “To have healthy people, we need a healthy planet.”
Sen. Legarda, author of the Climate Change Act, Renewable Energy Act, Solid Waste Management Act, and the Environmental Awareness Education Act, for her part pledged to take action to address climate change with much emphasis on public health.
“The 2013 IPCC Report on Climate Science revealed that humans have caused much of the change in climate we are experiencing. In the face of this truth, we are even more obliged to take action now. As nations living in one Earth, we must all work together and let us not delay the needed deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions because the longer we stall, the less time we have to avert a global catastrophe,” said Legarda.
1 UN lauds Philippines’ climate change laws ‘world’s best’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 4 May 2012, http://globalnation.inquirer.net/35695/un-lauds-philippines%E2%80%99-climate-change-laws-%E2%80%98world%E2%80%99s-best%E2%80%99