Health

Medact plans campaigns on climate and health

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PHOTO: Talissa Makdessi

ACTIVIST MEDICS are appealing for funds to help them continue work on the effects of climate change on human health. The campaigners are looking to raise £10,000 to continue their work after a disappointing COP26.

Medact’s roots are in the peace movement: it was formed by a merger of the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons and the Medical Association for the Prevention of War. The new organisation adopted a broad global health agenda – bringing health workers together to challenge the threats to human health coming from war, but also from climate change and the world’s oppressive political and economic systems.

They have been hard at it throughout 2021.
Over 3,000 individual health workers and many organisations of health workers took part in lobbying world leaders to take action against climate change before COP26.
350 healthworkers marched together in Glasgow on the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice (6th November), with the same number joining local demonstrations.
Medact was part of a coalition of radical health organisations which held a People’s Health Hearing outside the official climate talks in Glasgow – hearing stories from the ground which are often not reported at meetings of word leaders.
Local action groups in seven areas ran climate clinics to engage local people in campaigning for MPs to back the Green New Deal Bill.

The talks in Glasgow were not just for 2021 – the campaign to save us all from the ravages of climate change cannot take a back seat or move on to some other cause in 2022: it must grow bigger and louder if we are to keep global warming to below 1.5°C.. Medact is appealing for donations to help it reach a modest target of £10,000 to fund its health and climate change work next year.

●To donate to Medact’s health and climate change work, go to:
Donate to Medact

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