NHS leaders across the UK have urged the government to take action to limit further energy price increases or risk a ‘public health emergency’, the NHS Confederation announced.
NHS leaders from across England, Wales and Northern Ireland fear a ‘widening of health inequalities and worsening health outcomes’ for people living in communities with the highest levels of deprivation if excessive energy costs drive people further into poverty, predicting it fall to local NHS and social care services to ‘pick up the pieces’.
The letter – penned by the NHS Confederation to the chancellor – outlines that rapidly rising energy prices, alongside other cost of living pressures, will leave individuals and families facing ‘impossible choices’, such as heating their homes or skipping meals. It is feared that this widespread fuel poverty will increase the already high number of annual deaths associated with cold homes – estimated at around 10,000 a year.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “The country is facing a humanitarian crisis. Many people could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions. This in turn could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country and widen health inequalities, worsen children’s life chances and leave an indelible scar on local communities.”
The NHS is already facing what many are predicting to be ‘one of the toughest winters on record’ – resulting from high demand on health services combined with predicted high levels of flu, norovirus and potentially further COVID-19 outbreaks – and fear that failure to restrict energy price hikes will worsen the situation by increasing demand on already pressured health and social care services.
NHS leaders want the government to set out a more targeted and detailed support package for those households who need it most in advance of the decision on the new energy price cap expected on 26 August, warning that the government’s current policy of providing £400 between April and October will ‘fall far short’ for those most in need.
“These outbreaks will strike just as the NHS is likely to experience the most difficult winter on record. NHS leaders have made this unprecedented intervention as they know that fuel poverty will inevitably lead to significant extra demand on what are already very fragile services. Health leaders are clear that unless urgent action is taken by the government this will cause a public health emergency,” Taylor said.