How the world is tackling the cold homes health crisis

PRINT: The cold homes health crisis in the UK and beyondA couple admitted to hospital with hypothermia because they couldn’t afford heating.A man who spent hours a day lying in bed, covered in blankets.A woman who said she had stopped noticing it was cold—because if she allowed herself to, everything got more difficult.“It’s harrowing,” says Danielle Butler, senior research and policy officer at the UK charity National Energy Action. She and her colleagues heard these stories four years ago while researching energy poverty in the Outer Hebrides, a storm lashed archipelago off the west coast of Scotland. Butler says that the predicaments afflicting some in the Outer Hebrides pre-pandemic are now “commonplace” across the UK. Because of covid-19 and the energy price crisis, energy poverty has become more prevalent, including in less remote and better resourced parts of the country.There were nearly 5000 excess deaths in the UK last winter…
Read Original Article: How the world is tackling the cold homes health crisis »