NEW WORK: Richard Horton / The Lancet

‘All health professionals have a duty and obligation to engage in all kinds of non-violent social protest to address the climate emergency’ – Richard Horton

The Lancet is the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal in the world, offering wisdom to a global network of health professionals.

The journal publishes weekly featuring original research articles, seminars, reviews and editorials. The Lancet’s Editor in Chief is Richard Horton who has written for The Observer as a medical columnist, is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and was elected into the US Institute of Medicine.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was an historic step for the world in tackling the biggest global threat of the 21st century.

In 2016, The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, was launched, a new, independent research collaboration which builds on the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission, to track a world that is responding to climate change.

Variations in climate affect the air people breathe, the food they eat and the water they drink. Without mitigation, this results in a loss of capacity to sustain healthy human life.

This year, The Lancet released an editorial stating that government bodies which continue to disengage with the climate emergency are acting criminally.

Horton describes why the health community needs to come together as a global network to act in the face of government inaction. Describing how the role and responsibility held by health professionals is to engage in non-violent social protest to battle against irreversible ecological and climate breakdown. He argues that the global health community can make a positive contribution to tackling the climate crisis and how the GMC (General Medical Council) should protect and commend those who wish to participate in non-violent protest.

THE LANCET COUNTDOWN: Tracking progress on health and climate change

http://www.lancetcountdown.org

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