‘The effects of climate change are not something that will happen in the future, but something that is already affecting people today’, stated José Luis Castro, Special Envoy of the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, during a panel discussion on decarbonising healthcare. He noted that safe limits for microparticles in the air are exceeded by up to four times in Central and Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the latest research from the University of Chicago indicates that air pollution shortens life expectancy by years, and children are particularly vulnerable to disease because their lungs are not yet fully developed.
Professor Tadeusz Zielona, a pulmonologist at the Medical University of Warsaw, noted that Polish medicine focuses on treatment rather than prevention. With this approach, the number of patients will continue to grow. ‘If we only treat the effects of climate change and air pollution, we will have a huge problem’, he said. He also highlighted the lack of knowledge among medical students regarding the carbon footprint of medicines, stating, ‘We are starting from zero knowledge’. Meanwhile, the problem is significant. For example, anaesthetic gases generate significant CO2 emissions. According to Agnieszka Sznyk, president of INNOWO, there is a current movement in European hospitals to switch from these gases to injections.
Natalia Ciobanu, a partner at Thinkt, emphasised that the environmental impact of medical products is not the only thing being studied; the activities of medical facilities and the efficiency of hospitals are also under scrutiny. The work of people, the supply chain, and waste management methods are also important. ‘One aspect of ESG is assessing how our product, our hospital, or our healthcare facility impacts the world, which involves CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions’, said Ciobanu. ‘But there is also an external perspective – how my facility is affected by external phenomena, such as heat waves’.
Education on sustainable hospital operations in Europe is often provided by the hospitals' own employees and volunteers. ‘There are 16 sustainability teams at a hospital in Amsterdam who educate other employees’, said Agnieszka Sznyk.
Patient organisations are also interested in making medical services more environmentally friendly, according to Gergely Meszaros, an advisor to the European Lung Foundation. The pandemic has shown that it is easy to reach patients digitally, which reduces the carbon footprint of treatment, and these experiences are worth utilising. The European Reference Network for Respiratory Diseases aims to reduce travel for patients treated in specialist centres far from their homes by establishing a satellite network of regional hospitals that could treat people in less serious condition.
