UK Hospitals Overheat: NHS Unprepared for Climate Change

The UK's healthcare system is buckling under extreme heat, with hospitals built for a cooler climate struggling to cope. Staff report patients too sweaty to receive intravenous drips, medications degrading in high temperatures, and colleagues collapsing from heat fatigue. The situation has been described as 'horrific, horrendous, unbearable, unsafe.' Nick Watts, former chief sustainability officer of the NHS in England, notes that hospitals and care homes were designed assuming a stable climate, an assumption that has proven false. According to the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, 90% of England's hospital buildings are vulnerable to overheating, and necessary upgrades are expensive. Watts now leads the Centre for Sustainable Medicine in Singapore. The crisis highlights the UK's lack of preparedness for climate change, with fears that temperatures are rising faster than the country can adapt. Prime Minister Andy Burnham met with Met Office chief forecaster Dan Harris in Exeter to discuss the response to extreme heat, drought, and wildfires.