Canada Records World's First Patient Diagnosed with Climate Change

TORONTO: A doctor from British Columbia Province in Canada diagnosed a patient who came with a breathing issue as suffering from climate change and it is possibly the first-ever case like this recorded till date.

According to reports, a Canadian Women of 70 years old was admitted to Kootenay Lake hospital, Canada after suffering from problems while breathing. She blames her health condition is due to the recent wildfires heat waves in Kootenay that occurred earlier this year. The deadly wildfires have affected her to a great extent by worsening her asthma.

According to the BC Wildfire Service website, the Kootenay area in the British Columbia Province has faced over 1600 wildfires following this fiscal year. The head of the emergency room (ER) department of Kootenay Lake Hospital, Dr. Kyle Merritt has come across multiple cases where the heatwaves have worsened the already existing health diseases like heart failure and diabetes. But people struggle a lot when affected by severe illness to heatwaves or air pollution.

Since the month of June, hundreds of people in Canada have died because of wildfires that broke the Canadian heat records, including an all-time high of 49.6 degrees Celsius in Lytton, British Columbia occurred on June 29.

Dr. Kyle Merritt diagnosed the patient and said to sources about the huge amount of irritating heatwaves inside on patients suffering from numerous issues related to health all at one time. Her health problems include diabetes and also a few heart failures and she lives in a trailer without air conditioning as mentioned by the doctor. Dr. Merritt said that it is frustrating to see people suffering in such a vulnerable condition being affected by heat.

Dr. Merritt put together the Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health and wishes that his initiative will be helpful for other physicians to make a more straightforward link between climate change and their patients' health.

The topic of the link between public health and climate crisis has been a controversial part of the ongoing COP26 summit held in Glasgow. The United Kingdom hosted the climate conference which saw world leaders and technological experts coming together to strengthen a worldwide response to the threat caused by climate change. Many activists criticized the deals and announcements regarding them as not aggressive enough to bring a huge and meaningful change.

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