Dr James Hospedales, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of CARPHA, and for­mer co­or­di­na­tor, Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol of Chron­ic Dis­eases, Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion/World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, has part­nered with medics and nurs­es around the world to de­clare No­vem­ber 4 as Earth Medic and Earth Nurse Day.

The Earth Medic and Earth Nurse non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) were launched in Ju­ly 2020, as a part­ner­ship be­tween Dr Hospedales and Nurse Mag­gie Fay of the UK, to fo­cus on health and en­vi­ron­ment-re­lat­ed con­cerns.

Dr Hospedales said: “Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse are de­clar­ing an EM&EN day as a di­rect re­sponse to glob­al nurs­ing and med­ical or­gan­i­sa­tions' po­si­tions on cli­mate change.”

The World Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion stat­ed in Oc­to­ber 2019: "Health pro­fes­sion­als have an im­por­tant role in ad­vo­cat­ing to pro­tect the health of cit­i­zens around the world, and there­fore have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­mand greater ac­tion on cli­mate change."

The In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Nurs­es has said: "Cli­mate change presents the sin­gle largest threat to glob­al de­vel­op­ment with the po­ten­tial to un­der­mine the past 50 years of pub­lic health gains. Nurs­es can make a pow­er­ful con­tri­bu­tion to both mit­i­gate cli­mate change and to sup­port peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties around the world to adapt to its im­pacts."

Lo­cal­ly, the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion are on board, with an Earth­Nurse Trinidad and To­ba­go chap­ter be­ing formed.

Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse are be­ing es­tab­lished ‘to raise ur­gent at­ten­tion to and re­sources for ac­tion to im­prove plan­e­tary health, work­ing with an in­formed and em­pow­ered health work­force glob­al­ly, and through pub­lic-pri­vate-peo­ple-plan­et (PPPP) part­ner­ships, which fo­cus on ar­eas of co-ben­e­fi­cial ac­tion’.

“Earth­Medic & Earth­Nurse speaks out about cli­mate change and seeks to pro­tect health pro­fes­sion­als who are speak­ing out on cli­mate change. We are a home for nurs­es and doc­tors and oth­ers who are con­cerned about the cli­mate and health cri­sis.”

No­vem­ber 4 is be­ing de­clared as Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse Day, to cel­e­brate the ef­forts by health care pro­fes­sion­als around the world, as they work tire­less­ly to im­prove the health of peo­ple and the en­vi­ron­ment in which we all live. The date was cho­sen as the an­niver­sary of the his­toric Paris Agree­ment on Cli­mate Change com­ing in­to force on No­vem­ber 4, 2016, an agree­ment in which Caribbean gov­ern­ments played a key role in the ne­go­ti­a­tion out­come, to keep glob­al warm­ing well be­low 2.0 de­grees Cel­sius.