Carbon footprint modelling of national health systems: Opportunities, challenges and recommendations

Abstract

Health care presents significant contributions towards climate change. An awareness of a health systems carbon footprint provides a quantification of its environmental impact, an understanding of carbon intensive areas to target with reduction measures and a means of mapping trends in emissions over time. Attempts at calculating the carbon footprint of national health systems are few, predominantly of developed nations, and are limited by data availability and methodological inadequacies. There is a need to mobilise countries to understand the role of health care in contributing towards climate change and for them to start engaging in ongoing calculations of their national health system carbon footprints. There is also a need to improve data availability and information systems to allow for such calculations, especially in developing countries where there may be differences in carbon hotspots. Finally, there is a need for continued improvements in the carbon footprint modelling methodology of health systems as data collection and available emission factors, especially of health care specific products and supply chain emissions, improves. Health systems need to join the global fight against climate change.

Impact of power consumption and power saving for GI endoscopy (power on study) on reducing CO2emissions

“…Rising greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change, 1 necessitating a more urgent environmentally conscious approach. Healthcare systems significantly impact climate change, with high-material-consumption areas like gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy contributing the most to CO 2 emissions due to caseloads, patient travel, waste and decontamination processes.…”

Climate change and human health: Last call to arms for us

“…Carbon footprint is a key metric that, more effectively than any other variable, enables us to assess the environmental consequences of human activities on climate change and, consequently, on global warming[ 16 ]. It quantifies the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly carbon dioxide, resulting from individual, organisational or product-specific activities.…”

The carbon footprint of products used in five common surgical operations: identifying contributing products and processes

“…We selected for analysis the five highest volume surgical procedures performed in the NHS in England using the 2017-2018 Hospital Episode Statistics database, 19 and included only operations typically performed by surgical specialties recognised by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 20 and excluded diagnostic procedures, or those commonly performed outside the operating room. These were total knee arthroplasty (80,627 performed in 2017-2018 in England), cholecystectomy (73,069), inguinal hernia repair (64,650), carpal tunnel decompression (47,023) and tonsillectomy (46,131). 19 The functional unit was defined as one of each of these operations.…”