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Visits to Australian emergency departments surged during bushfire crisis: report

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CANBERRA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Visits to emergency departments in Australia surged during the Black Summer bushfire crisis as smoke blanketed much of the country, a report has found.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) on Wednesday published a report on the short-term health impacts of the 2019-20 bushfires, which burned more than 18 million hectares of land mostly on the country's east coast.

It found that there was about a 50 percent surge in visits to emergency departments in the Sydney area between September 2019 and March 2020 when the fires were at their worst.

In regional New South Wales (NSW), the state hit hardest by the fires, sales of inhalers for shortness of breath increased by 70 percent.

Some areas of Australia, including the nation's capital Canberra, experienced worse air quality than others and recorded the worst air quality of any city in the world on some days during the crisis.

"In the week beginning 5 January 2020, hourly PM2.5 concentrations at the Canberra-based Florey air quality monitoring station reached 2,496ug/m3-hourly readings of 300 and above are considered 'extremely poor'," AIHW spokesperson Richard Juckes said in a media release.

The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, which was established by Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison in the wake of the fires and released its final report in October, made 80 recommendations including establishing a national fleet of aerial firefighting resources and introducing a nationally consistent disaster warning system.

Thirty-three people died, including six Australian firefighters and three American aerial firefighters, in the 2019-20 bushfires, which burned from July 2019 to March 2020. The smoke blanketed much of Australia, including capital cities, and contributed to hundreds of deaths, according to the report.

"The AIHW will further analyse air quality and fire danger index data to provide a more comprehensive picture of the relationship between population exposure to bushfire smoke (fine particle pollution) and health. We are also exploring a broader program of work for the AIHW relating to the environment and health," Juckes said. Enditem

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