Doctors group seeks climate change action

Fossil fuels are making Australians sick and if we don't take action, we're going to get sicker.

That's the key message of an alliance of doctors and medical students, who want the government to know climate change is a public health emergency.

It's not just extreme weather events like cyclones and floods that are cause for concern - although they do worry doctors - it's also heat that threatens to kill thousands of elderly Australians, children or people with chronic health conditions.

According to federal government figures, 374 people died from heat-related problems in the week before the Black Saturday fires in Victoria.

That's more than double the 173 who perished in the actual fires.

Dr Helen Redmond from Doctors for the Environment Australia believes those figures show exactly how dangerous climate change will be.

"Whilst the people being killed in fires is very dramatic, it's actually the silent killer of the heat that's going to produce a lot of increased deaths," Dr Redmond told AAP.

The doctors believe climate change could also reduce access to clean water and food, and tropical diseases like dengue fever and Ross River virus could also move further south.

They'll raise their concerns at a two-day conference in Sydney starting on Saturday.

"This is urgent, this is an emergency," Dr Redmond said.

Australian Medical Association President Brian Owler will tell the conference a failure to act on climate change amounts to intergenerational theft.

He believes changes in climate will have "significant consequences" for the health of Australians.

"If we don't put policies in place now to control climate change, but also so that we are prepared should climate continue to warm, we're going to do the next generation a disservice as well," Dr Owler will say via a video message.

Dr Redmond believes medical bodies should begin divesting in fossil fuels, just as Doctors for the Environment Australia has done.

"There's a strong ethical argument here, to do no harm with our money just as we try to do no harm to our patients," she said.

The doctors say it's important to be heard now, as the federal government prepares to put its post-2020 emissions reduction target on the table before the United Nations climate change conference later this year.

Australia is aiming to slash emissions by five per cent by 2020 but the Climate Council believes Australia must cut emissions to 40 per cent by 2025 to appropriately contribute to limiting global warming to the goal of two degrees.