Why did we come all the way to Borneo? Â Well…I was intrigued enough by ASRI/Health in Harmony’s integrated health and conservation project in Sukadana that I wanted to see it for myself. Â The basic idea is that in this rural area in Western Kalimantan, Borneo, providing affordable healthcare allows people to stop cutting down the
We arrived in Sukadana at  Alam Sehat Lestari ‘s hospital about a week ago.  We made the 2-2.5 hour drive from Ketapang along a two-lane road, driving on the opposite side of the street as we do in Canada. We saw lots of palm trees, quite well-kept houses. Corrugated metal roofs, tiled ones; tile and stucco
At some point in my life as an ER doc in a small town I started noticing sirens…but only when I’m within a day or two of working a shift. Â The rest of the time my brain blessedly filters them out completely. I hadn’t noticed any since leaving Yellowknife, and then we got off the
As Jenie described it and his cousin Andy later showed us, as you head to Camp Leakey, the park is on your right, and a series of research stations and villages are on your left. Branching off every so often on the left are irrigation channels about 2 metres wide. They supply water to palm
We wanted to spot some orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park before heading to Health in Harmony and ASRI’s hospital in Western Kalimantan, Borneo, so we carried life jackets for the kids with us all the way from Yellowknife.  (ER MD job hazard=safety police tendencies…yep– everyone loves to travel with me!) Mr Head-Packer sighed, but
“Di manakah toilet?†We put our 4 year-old Vivi in charge of learning how to ask directions to the bathroom in Indonesian. Important job. Needed the best possible chance of being remembered. I figured she has the youngest mind, so given language-learning aptitudes it was most likely to stick there. And it did. For both
The lines between humanitarianism, environmentalism and Planetary Health are blurring as the impacts of environmental change on human health become more clear and the need to respond to them more urgent. I met Steve Cornish when he was the head of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières–Doctors Without Borders) Canada and I was a doctor returning from
« Pendant trop longtemps, nous avons mis la santé et l’environnement dans différentes boîtes. Le travail de notre génération est de combler les deux, de comprendre qu’en fait, ils appartiennent à la même boîte – que la santé planétaire définit la santé humaine – et que nous améliorons l’un, nous allons améliorer l’autre ainsi.
TEDxMontrealWomen “For too long we’ve put health and the environment in different boxes. The work of our generation is to bridge the two, to understand that in fact, they belong in the same box–that planetary health defines human health–and that as we improve one, we will improve the other as well.”
Publié dans l’Observateur national le 29 novembre 2017.
« Le Canada, le Royaume-Uni et ses partenaires ont annoncé une alliance mondiale pour éliminer progressivement l’énergie du charbon lors de la COP23 à Bonn, en Allemagne. Ce fut un honneur de prendre la parole au nom du milieu de la santé lors du lancement, car l’élimination progressive de l’énergie du charbon est une recommandation clé du rapport sur le compte à rebours 2017 de Lancet et du mémoire britannique associé du compte à rebours, ainsi que du mémoire canadien que j’ai co-écrit au nom de l’Association canadienne de santé publique.
“Canada, the UK and partners announced a global alliance to phase-out coal power at COP23 in Bonn, Germany.”
Dr. Courtney Howard at the 2017 Planetary Health Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.
“Perhaps because we mostly work inside boxes—hospitals, clinics, universities, and office buildings—it has taken the world’s health community far too long to realize that human health belongs in the same box as what we call “the environment.”
“Courtney Howard, right, presents a letter on behalf of more than 150 Canadian doctors and medical students to Catherine McKenna, Canada’s minister of Environment and Climate Change at the COP 21 conference in Paris. (Courtney Howard/Twitter)”
The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) took an historic stand Aug. 26 when general council delegates agreed to divest CMA of its holdings in fossil-fuel companies.
“In 2009, the Lancet called climate change the “biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”
“Courtney Howard hails from the mist and moss of North Vancouver and has spent the last few years hospital-hopping around Canada, working in ERs in BC, Ontario, Quebec and way, way up there in the Northwest Territories.”