Canadian woman diagnosed with ‘climate change’
Doctor links world-first case to deadly heatwaves and wildfires

A Canadian woman is said to be the first patient in the world to have been given a diagnosis of climate change.
In late June, as parts of North America were experiencing a heatwave that would “go down as both the hottest and deadliest in Canadian history”, a woman in her 70s attended the emergency department of a hospital in British Columbia suffering from diabetes and heart failure, said the Canadian newspaper the Times Colonist.
As temperatures continued to rise, more patients began presenting with respiratory illnesses. And “for the first time in his ten years as a physician”, Dr Kyle Merritt, the head of the emergency department, wrote the words “climate change” on his patient’s chart.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The elderly patient was diagnosed with the unusual condition after the heatwaves worsened her frail health. It’s understood that the woman lived in a trailer without air conditioning, which exacerbated the risks of extreme heat.
“If we’re not looking at the underlying cause, and we’re just treating the symptoms, we’re just going to keep falling further and further behind,” Merritt told local media.
Merritt “remembers a tipping point”, the Times Colonist said, with people running to shops to buy spray bottles in an attempt to keep patients cool. “Just as doctors and nurses started to make sense of the record heat, it cleared – only to be replaced by a blanket of wildfire smoke,” the paper continued.
Both the heat and the smoke from wildfires caused severe health problems for British Columbia residents, and it is believed more than 500 people lost their lives as a result of the record-breaking temperatures this summer. The extreme heat took an “aggravated toll” on patients who were “battling multiple health problems at once, often with little money”, said the newspaper. “It’s hard to see people, especially the most vulnerable people in our society, being affected,” said Merritt.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
He contacted other healthcare professionals in the Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia and a group called the Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health has since been formed. Its members, “all busy trying to manage a pandemic and their regular professional lives”, Times Colonist noted, are “working to better human health by protecting the planet”, according to the group’s website.
Last month, more than 100 doctors and health experts warned in a report published by The Lancet that climate change was posing the greatest global risk to human health this century. However, the study also said climate change presents “the greatest opportunity to redefine the social and environmental determinants of health”.
-
A running list of RFK Jr.'s controversies
In Depth The man atop the Department of Health and Human Services has had no shortage of scandals over the years
By Brigid Kennedy
-
Film reviews: Sinners and The King of Kings
Feature Vampires lay siege to a Mississippi juke joint and an animated retelling of Jesus' life
By The Week US
-
Music reviews: Bon Iver, Valerie June, and The Waterboys
Feature "Sable, Fable," "Owls, Omens, and Oracles," "Life, Death, and Dennis Hopper"
By The Week US
-
Electric ferries are becoming the next big environmental trend
Under the Radar From Hong Kong to Lake Tahoe, electric ferries are the new wave
By Justin Klawans, The Week US
-
Ukraine is experiencing an 'ecocide' and wants Russia to pay
Under the radar The environment is a silent victim of war
By Devika Rao, The Week US
-
How wild horses are preventing wildfires in Spain
Under The Radar The animals roam more than 5,700 hectares of public forest, reducing the volume of combustible vegetation in the landscape
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK
-
Scientists invent a solid carbon-negative building material
Under the radar Building CO2 into the buildings
By Devika Rao, The Week US
-
Dozens of deep-sea creatures discovered after iceberg broke off Antarctica
Under the radar The cold never bothered them anyway
By Devika Rao, The Week US
-
Earth's climate is in the era of 'global weirding'
The Explainer Weather is harder to predict and more extreme
By Devika Rao, The Week US
-
Hot to go: extreme heat can make people age faster
Under the radar New research shows warming temperatures can affect biological age
By Devika Rao, The Week US
-
Parts of California are sinking and affecting sea level
Under the radar Climate change is bringing the land to the sea
By Devika Rao, The Week US