Australia's premier medical research funder provides almost no research into climate change impacts on health despite the issue providing "a huge challenge for the health sector", a group of leading scientists say in a new paper.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) pioneered studies on the urgent need for research into global warming's health impacts with a 1991 report. Despite that Australia had spent less than one dollar in every $1000 on health funding to the issue since, the researchers including Nobel laureate Peter Doherty said.

It took until 2003 for the NHMRC to award its first project grant on the issue. "In 2016, none of the 516 funded project grants, totalling $420 million, included a climate change or heatwave focus", according to the paper published this week in Nature Climate Change.

The near total lack of medical research into climate change and health comes despite heatwaves already killing more Australians than any other natural hazard. For instance, severe heat in the days prior to the 2009 Black Saturday fires killed more than twice the 173 bushfire fatalities, said Andy Pitman, one of the authors.