The energy crisis puts a health time-bomb under Britain’s most vulnerable
The writer is a science commentator
The constant swirl of cold and damp can make for an early grave. More people expire in the winter than in warmer months due to an increase in heart attacks, stroke, respiratory disease (including Covid), flu, falls and hypothermia.
The approaching change of season coupled with the prospect of soaring energy costs prompted researchers to warn last week of an impending “public health and humanitarian crisis” as people struggle to heat their homes. Sir Michael Marmot, a health equity researcher at University College London, together with paediatricians Ian Sinha and Alice Lee at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, wrote in the British Medical Journal that the health consequences will be felt not just by the elderly but also by the young, whose maturing respiratory systems may be impaired for life.
Rising energy costs also place additional physical and mental health burdens on those least able to shoulder them. Low-income families are already more likely to live in cramped, poorly insulated housing in areas with high pollution. These factors, along with food poverty, collectively chip away at health: the children who attend Alder Hey’s respiratory clinic live in some of England’s most deprived postcodes. If levelling-up is a true Conservative aim, then the government has a duty to minimise these stresses, rather than compounding them by allowing warmth to become an unaffordable luxury.
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This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Anjana Ahuja
