When extreme weather happens, there is always a health risk.

Australians have seen the impacts of severe flooding on the nation’s east coast in 2022 and now in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.

DEA’s Deputy Chair and Adelaide GP, Dr Kate Wylie, joins Professor Lesley Hughes from The Climate Council and Greg Mullins from Emergency Leaders for Climate Action to drive home the message that there is nothing ‘natural’ about these disasters.

They are being unleashed by decades of reliance on fossil fuels, and Australia’s current disaster planning and management systems are struggling to cope and are not equipped to deal with all that will come.

Dr Wylie states, “Climate change is a health issue and we need to treat it just like we treat any other life-threatening health problem.”

The article appeared in The New Daily on 11 January 2023