‘Inhumane’: UK’s extreme heat pushes NHS staff, patients to limit

That is how medical professionals describe the impact of this year’s heatwaves on Britain’s healthcare system, in response to a survey by the Doctors’ Association UK.

In hospitals built for a cooler climate, staff are now dealing with patients too sweaty to receive intravenous drips, medication at risk of degrading in high temperatures and colleagues collapsing on the job with heat fatigue.

The past few months have revealed the extent to which Britain’s healthcare system appears unprepared for the profound change in climate already under way. The fear now is that temperatures are rising too fast for the UK to adapt.

Britain’s hospitals and care homes were set up “with a core assumption that the climate was going to be stable”, said Nick Watts, the former chief sustainability officer of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. “That’s just turned out to not be a good assumption.”

Vulnerable to overheating

Some 90 per cent of England’s hospital buildings are vulnerable to overheating, according to the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. The upgrades needed “are pretty expensive,” said Watts, who now runs the Centre for Sustainable Medicine, a research institute in Singapore.