Coast GP to lead Australian doctors’ fight aganist war

Jessica Benton
A SURF COAST doctor is leading a call to abolish warfare around the world.
Long-serving Torquay GP Bill Williams was elected president of Australian Medical Association for Prevention of War last month.
The peak medical body represents doctors and other health professionals on peace and health issues.
Dr Williams said he hoped to use his position of power to advocate and educate the community on the human and economic costs of warfare.
He believed the association could have significant influence in pushing the case against war.
“We’ve played a central role over the past three decades in educating the public and other health professionals as well as advocating to governments on the health costs of war,” he said.
“The acute effects of war are human death and maims and the reality is that in the last few decades in most modern wars the main victims of warfare are civilians.
“Working to prevent and resolve conflict is an essential part of my job as a doctor. War not only kills and maims, it also costs big money: one sixth of the global military budget could pay for the basic living needs of the world’s poor and put the brakes on environmental degradation.
“By preventing war, we can prevent a lot of death and illness.”
Dr Williams used a nuclear bomb blast in Geelong as an example of the cost of war.
The human cost would be 100,000 deaths from the blast, fire and radiation. A further 100,000 would die in following decades from radiation-related illness.
“While the risk is very low, the impact could be devastating,” Dr Williams said.
“I’m not trying to scare people but rather raise the awareness of these possibilities.”
In the past Dr Williams has campaigned for the abolition of atomic weapons, highlighting in particular the associated health risks related to nuclear power and uranium mining.
Dr Williams was born and bred in Geelong. He has worked for many years in the region as a hospital doctor, a forensic medical officer and a GP.
He spent most of the 1990s working for remote Aboriginal health services in the Northern Territory before returning to practice at the Surf Coast Medical Clinic in Torquay 10 years ago.
The association was established about 30 years ago at the height of the Cold War.
Dr Williams said its major focus was still abolition of nuclear weapons.