Greens call for Cobra meeting to be called as vulnerable people struggle with rising temperatures.

 

The Met Office has declared a national emergency as temperatures are set to soar to 40C this week.

 

The UK Health Security Agency has also issued a level four alert and NHS leaders warned over the weekend that A&E departments could struggle to cope with a rise in admissions caused by the heatwave.

 

This is the first time the system for warning of likely health impacts caused by extreme weather introduced in 2021 has been triggered. A spokesperson for the Met Office told the BBC the situation was potentially “very serious” [1].

 

Green Party Health and Social Care spokesperson Pallavi Devulapalli, who also works as a GP in Norfolk said “We know that the very high temperatures we are likely to see over the next few days could lead to an increase in life-threatening conditions such as heat stroke, heart attacks and strokes” [2]

 

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsey said the problems the country faced including melting road surfaces, and possible power and water shortages were “the consequences of decades of inaction in the face of the climate emergency”.

 

He added that “urgent action” was needed to ensure the country’s infrastructure was “resilient to extreme weather events” and that there also needed to be an “urgent reduction in CO2 emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown, but we’ve left this far too late already, and the extreme weather is now built in”.

 

The heatwave has caused wildfires in Europe that have seen 16,000 people evacuated in south-west France, Spain Greece and Croatia have also been impacted [3].

 

Dr Devulapalli warned that with ambulance services across England declaring a critical incident people who need emergency help may not be able to get it in time and that lives could be lost as a result.

 

The crisis has, he said, been caused by a “decades long failure” to address problems with social car and underfunding of NHS services, adding that government policy driven by “ideology rather than problem solving” had had created “multiple intersecting crises”.

 

Adrian Ramsey called on the government to act saying “Cobra must urgently assess how vulnerable people are supported during extreme weather events - not just heatwaves but also storms and flooding. It should also investigate immediately where our infrastructure and services are at risk during such severe weather.”

 

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62177458

[2] https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2022/07/15/heatwave-will-put-lives-put-at-risk-due-to-government-failure/?link_id=0&can_id=8bc5e413fe5b14a23ca14eb06da17776&source=email-green-party-morning-briefing-thursday-14-july-2&email_referrer=email_1607941&email_subject=green-party-morning-briefing-monday-18-july

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62196045