Hospital Buildings are Vulnerable to Overheating

Hospital Buildings are Vulnerable to Overheating

Approximately 90% of hospital buildings are vulnerable to overheating. This severely compromises patient care, particularly for vulnerable children with chronic conditions like asthma or diabetes, as well as other high-risk patients.

So there are now 2 research projects to try and understand and tackle the heat.

The first is for children’s hospitals. ‘Heat-resilient paediatric care’, is a 10-month NIHR Development Award project. It aims to achieve a heat-resilient UK children’s hospital system by 2050. Overheating incidents have increased by 53 per cent since 2016/17.

A second project with Sheffield Teaching Hospitals looks at high-risk zones such as surgical wards, drug storerooms, and critical IT centres. Researchers consider energy and thermal comfort modelling to establish sustainable methods for dealing with heat.

This comes after official government data analysed by the Liberal Democrats found almost 500 people died in care homes and over 470 died in hospitals from excessive heat last year

Heatwaves pose an especially serious risk for older people, with a 145% increase in deaths due to excess heat for 65+ in the five years from 2018 to 2023