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Medicine Is Failing to Recognize Climate-Change Diseases
The current medical coding system that healthcare professionals use is deficient in that it cannot accurately reflect the true scope of illness and its origin in climate change.
Each time you receive any healthcare services, a code is used on your chart to identify the disorder being treated. The code comes from The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) an international means of quantifying diseases and disorders. Currently, the code is in its tenth iteration. But it is not a complete classifying nosology system and many disorders may not be listed, meaning some have to be loosely grouped with others similar to it. And that’s not the end of the "problem,” because climate change is missing as a category.
The issue is complex, as is the reason for the discrepancy. To start, the WHO (World Health Organization) estimate only takes into consideration the four health effects of climate change that are now known to exist: heat stress, malaria, malnutrition, and diarrhea. However, there are numerous other recognized pathways that might lead to health problems.
The data is now almost ten years old and outdated; the estimate of 250,000 extra deaths annually is a projection for the future rather than an evaluation of the harm already being caused by climate change; and the number of deaths related…
