Kate Woodhead highlights the need for every health board to enable their teams – and, in particular, their operating theatre teams – to examine their practice so they can reduce their carbon footprint. She discusses the recommendations of The Green Surgery Report and considers some of the potential barriers.
Climate change is having a devastating effect on our world already and is accepted as being one of the greatest challenges of the modern era. With floods, fires and frequent storms — not to mention the threat of vector borne diseases such as Lyme disease and dengue fever — we must take significant action to reduce or mitigate it as far as possible to reduce its increasing impact. It is generally accepted that the current use of resources globally is unsustainable for the health and wellbeing of future generations.
Healthcare and surgical practice, in particular, comprises a significant proportion of global emissions estimated at 4.4%, when aviation only contributes 2.5%.1 Operating theatres are the greatest users of resources in each hospital and therefore should have the greatest opportunity to reduce emissions and aid the target towards Net Zero by 2040, for the direct emissions that the NHS controls and a wider target for indirect emissions by 2045.
This aim to reduce the carbon footprint of the NHS is now law. It is not just a 'nice to have' but now a statutory requirement embedded into legislation in the Health and Care Act 2022. The report Delivering a Net Zero National Health Service is now issued as guidance.2
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