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Climate change: the biggest global crisis of our time 

The articles in the Impact of Global Warming on Women’s Health special section provide insight into the many facets of the climate change crisis and its diverse effects on women’s health, while also calling for immediate action from the healthcare community to implement more sustainable practices.

This special section touches on a number of key elements in the climate crisis, including: 

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IJGO publishes a special section on the impact of global warming on women’s health

The International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics (IJGO) has joined a wide group of international medical journals – including BMJ, Lancet, Medical Journal of Australia, National Medical Journal of India and New England Journal of Medicine – in publishing an editorial to support a call for urgent action at COP27.  

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New IJGO editorial – COP27 Climate Change Conference: Urgent action needed for Africa and the world

We are seeing the impacts of climate change all around us, and even in the face of a global pandemic, it continues to be the greatest public health threat of our lives. Women bear a disproportionate burden of climate impacts, in part because of the increasing evidence of the harms of climate change on birth outcomes.

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Let's Talk Climate Interview: Climate Action for Women's Health and Better Birth Outcomes

The climate crisis has become a public health emergency that disproportionately affects pregnant people, children, those from disadvantaged and marginalised communities, and people of colour, including Black, Brown and Indigenous people.

5 mins read
Climate change, women’s health, and the role of obstetricians and gynaecologists in leadership
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FIGO calls on OBGYNs to help “mitigate the climate crisis affecting our patients and their families”

In a special article published online in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, leading OBGYNs highlight the impact the climate crisis has on human reproduction and the fundamental risks it poses to the very continuation of our species. The authors, who wrote the article on behalf of the FIGO Committee on Climate Change and Toxic Environmental Exposures, highlight the role fossil fuels play in driving climate change and the need for government-driven and society-wide solutions to the crisis.

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a large class of thousands of industrial chemicals that are recognised by many prominent scientists and agencies as toxicants. Extreme persistence is the defining characteristic of this class of compounds, but they can also be highly mobile, bio-accumulative and hazardous.

Many of the most-studied PFAS persist in human tissue for years, with serum half-lives ranging from several years to decades. PFAS cross the placenta, are detected in cord serum, and are transmitted to newborns and infants via contaminated breast milk.

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New infographic and statement released on the effect of PFAS on women’s health