National Nurses United

"It's a matter of priorities," Contra Costa Public Health Direc- tor Dr. Wendell Brunner told Revolution. He points to West Nile virus as an example. While he is all for getting rid of mosquitoes, he says the county is spending more on mosquito abatement than on HIV. "We have one case of West Nile, we have thousands in- fected with HIV, almost all of whom will die." The city of San Francisco has chosen to focus on long-range solutions rather than short-range programs, according to Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, director of occupational and environmental health for the city's public health department. "I think it is important to think in terms of the whole world, not just our portion of it. It would be a wrong use of energy and resources to direct our efforts toward dealing with the ef- fects of climate change rather than efforts to prevent it," he told Revolution. Bhatia compares the problem to the proliferation of atomic weapons. "We should not be preparing for a nuclear attack— building bomb shelters—but banning and destroying nuclear weapons." Kay McVay, RN, California Nurses Association liaison coordi- nator and former CNA president, strongly believes that "health- care professionals and healthcare workers should be in the forefront of efforts to educate the public and to support strong measure to head off global warming." But she worries that "nobody is being taught how to respond— there is no plan." "Our public health system has been decimated," McVay says. "Hospitals have been closed by the hundreds, and RNs have been moved away from the bedside, and there is a shortage of public health nurses. We just don't have the structure in place to han- dle [climate change]." One thing seems clear: Given the inadequate finances of pub- lic health, people in the field are wrestling with hard choices of where to bullet their efforts. Like the knee bone to the thigh bone, higher temperatures have a cascading effect on a number of environmental factors. Severe drought is presently affecting one in six countries and has already created a continent-wide crisis in Africa. "Southern Africa is definitely becoming drier and everyone there agrees the cli- mate is changing," Wulf Killman of the U.N. Food and Agricul- ture Organization's Climate Change Group, told the British newspaper The Guardian. Some 34 African countries, with upwards of 30 million peo- ple, are experiencing drought and consequent food shortages. "Drought affects people's ability to feed themselves. A lack of food means a weakened population, one that is more susceptible to disease," says Moser, "and if you are stressed to the max, you don't need much of an extreme event to push you over the edge." When people do go over that edge, there is virtually no net to catch them. A 2003 study by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that while developing countries carry 90 percent of the disease burden, they have only 10 percent of the world's health resources. WHO estimates that 23,000 of Africa's best- trained health workers emigrate to Europe and the West each year, leaving only 800,000 doctors and nurses for the entire con- tinent. While aid can mitigate some of that burden, aid is not enough, according to "Africa—Up in Smoke?" by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, a coalition of organizations ranging from Oxfam to Greenpeace. "All the aid we pour into Africa will be inconsequential if we don't tackle climate change," Nicola Saltman of the World Wide Fund for Nature and a mem- ber of the U.N.'s Climate Change Group told the Independent. GETTING BIT Climate change does not mean that the world gets drier every- where. "Global warming means some places are going to get wet- ter, which is perfect for mosquitoes," says Dr. Don Francis of Global Solutions in an interview with Revolution. Francis, a for- mer epidemiologist for the Center for Disease Control and an ex- pert on diseases like smallpox, HIV and Ebola, predicts, "Infectious diseases, particularly those with vectors like mosqui- toes, will move north. And with warmer temperatures and milder winters, there will be longer transmission periods for diseases like malaria and encephalitis." That process is already underway. According to Dr. Jonathan 14 D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 C A L I F O R N I A N U R S E "Our public health system has been decimated," McVay says. "Hospitals have been closed by the hundreds, and RNs have been moved away from the bedside, and there is a shortage of public health nurses. We just don't have the structure in place to handle [climate change]." —KAY MCVAY, RN, CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION LIAISON COORDINATOR AND FORMER CNA PRESIDENT Feature Story

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