Dr Paula Hen­ry

As­so­ciate of Earth­medic and Earth­Nurse Foun­da­tion for Plan­e­tary Health

It is no se­cret that cli­mate change is the biggest pub­lic health threat of the 21st cen­tu­ry – but what may be a se­cret are the ef­forts of our health cen­tres and pro­fes­sion­als to com­bat that threat.

Since its 2008 open­ing, the Ox­ford Street Health Cen­tre has con­tin­u­ous­ly ex­pand­ed its ser­vices. This mul­ti-ser­vice com­plex in Port-of-Spain pro­vides pri­ma­ry health­care for a pop­u­la­tion of some 30,000 from St Ann’s/Cas­cade in the north to Laven­tille Road in the south.

Cur­rent­ly, 28 staff mem­bers pro­vide pri­ma­ry care ser­vices for 1,000 pa­tients month­ly. The self-mo­ti­vat­ed, in­no­v­a­tive staff col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly de­vel­oped The Think Green Team with our NGO, Earth­Medic & Earth­Nurse Foun­da­tion for Plan­e­tary Health, in an ef­fort to fight cli­mate change. Mem­bers weren’t fazed by lim­it­ed space in their most­ly con­crete fa­cil­i­ty and got cre­ative, plant­i­ng crops of let­tuce, kale, cab­bage and gin­ger, us­ing wa­ter bot­tles, a wood­en pal­let, met­al drums and a non-func­tion­ing re­frig­er­a­tor. Lat­er ad­di­tions in­clud­ed corn, fever grass, sour­sop and vervine, this time plant­ed in the com­pound’s lim­it­ed soil.

Out-of-the-box think­ing was es­sen­tial to mak­ing the Think Green Project work, and so the team didn’t stop at a gar­den. With in­no­va­tion in mind, our NGO used month­ly ed­u­ca­tion­al ses­sions as a teach­ing tool. Though the lunch break was on­ly an hour, this time was ide­al for dis­cus­sion, brain­storm­ing and shar­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies to com­bat the cli­mate cri­sis.

‘Adap­ta­tion’, a term com­mon­ly used by cli­mate sci­en­tists, refers to chang­ing what is be­ing done or do­ing new things to min­imise the neg­a­tive im­pacts of cli­mate change. Every­one in T&T can re­late to flood­ing. Ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted health­care providers have had cli­mate change-fu­elled prob­lems like flood­ing di­rect­ly af­fect­ing their abil­i­ty to do their jobs. One of the se­nior nurs­es liv­ing in San­gre Grande, 50 kilo­me­tres from the cap­i­tal, shared that her com­mute could be six hours on days with heavy rain­fall.

Cli­mate change re­sults in more ex­treme rain­fall, and there­fore flood­ing, but is that the whole sto­ry? An em­ploy­ee liv­ing in Mar­aval was ea­ger to share his views. Ram­pant de­for­esta­tion in wa­ter­shed ar­eas with wide­spread con­struc­tion of hous­ing de­vel­op­ments leads to land­slides and flood­ing. Tree roots hold soil to­geth­er, so cut­ting down forests in these wa­ter­shed ar­eas for new hous­ing de­vel­op­ments de­stroys nat­ur­al pro­tec­tions against flood­ing. In­stal­la­tion of wide gut­ter­ing to han­dle heav­ier rain­fall can help to re­duce flood­ing over­all, but gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion through ap­pro­pri­ate en­force­ment of pre-ex­ist­ing Town and Coun­try poli­cies is crit­i­cal.

As cit­i­zens, it is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to hold State agen­cies ac­count­able. Fre­quent dredg­ing of rivers and leg­is­la­tion to pre­vent dump­ing of rub­bish in­to wa­ter­ways is, again, cru­cial. Fur­ther­more, in Mar­aval, there are no avail­able com­mu­ni­ty bins for re­cy­cling, con­tribut­ing to pol­lu­tion. Out­side of Mar­aval, “green­ing” of Port-of-Spain, along with ur­ban de­vel­op­ment, will both im­prove drainage and de­crease the “heat is­land” ef­fect con­tribut­ing to a hot­ter city.

An­oth­er con­cept that sparked much dis­cus­sion was ‘Mit­i­ga­tion’, mean­ing any­thing that de­creas­es the quan­ti­ty of car­bon diox­ide in the at­mos­phere. To do this, ei­ther we put less car­bon in­to the at­mos­phere or re­move the car­bon that is al­ready there. The im­por­tance of plants as car­bon-sinks was pro­mot­ed, as plants ab­sorb car­bon diox­ide from the at­mos­phere, just as hu­mans breathe oxy­gen.

Sev­er­al sto­ries were shared, for ex­am­ple, a grand­fa­ther grow­ing fruit trees and veg­eta­bles in near­by Bel­mont, a stone’s throw away from the clin­ic! The max­im “Grow what you eat and eat what you grow” makes good sense af­ter all. Bring back the ‘ole time days’: flow­er­ing plants, herbs and plants for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es.

It is im­por­tant to high­light one’s in­di­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tion to the car­bon foot­print. Us­ing elec­tri­cal ap­pli­ances con­tributes to car­bon emis­sions, so turn­ing off lights and air-con­di­tion­ing when not in use should be­come a habit. The ben­e­fits of us­ing re­new­able en­er­gy were ap­pre­ci­at­ed; how­ev­er, the cost was a com­mon con­cern.

Team mem­bers were pas­sion­ate, elo­quent and ex­plic­it about their dai­ly re­al­i­ties.

“An ef­fi­cient bus ser­vice would en­sure that we get to work on time, have greater time for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and spend less time in traf­fic, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly de­creas­ing the car­bon foot­print.”

How­ev­er, there will be no pol­i­cy change un­less there is da­ta to sup­port the cur­rent re­al­i­ty. To mon­i­tor shifts in dis­ease pat­terns, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is key, and the health sec­tor needs to be giv­en pri­or­i­ty. We are see­ing more late-stage can­cers, so it is im­por­tant to note any pos­si­ble cor­re­la­tion with cli­mate change.

At the clin­ic, a Think Green ban­ner dis­play re­minds all to Grow, Eat, Feel, Live and Think Green. This vi­brant, in­no­v­a­tive com­mu­ni­ty is adamant about tack­ling the cli­mate cri­sis by adopt­ing new be­hav­iours and en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to do so, ad­vo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy change and pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence through da­ta col­lec­tion.

We hope we can serve as a mod­el for oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

The fol­low­ing was a col­umn pro­vid­ed by Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to equip read­ers to face the cli­mate and health cri­sis.