In advance of the recent MPs vote to withdraw the Winter Fuel Allowance from many pensioners, I wrote for The Metro, on the health impacts of energy poverty. Below is the published article, also available on The Metro online.
For those of us working in the NHS, worries about winter start earlier every year.
I’m a consultant who specialises in respiratory illnesses, and as the weather starts to get worse, I’m reminded of Jane, a patient in her 70s, living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and numerous other health problems who was admitted twice in a matter of weeks last winter.
She was so scared by her energy bills that she had rationed her heating to an hour a day in one room of her poorly insulated, draughty home. It wasn’t enough. The cold left her vulnerable to infection and fighting for every breath. She didn’t know how to ask for help or where to turn to, so she ended up where so many do: in an NHS bed on my ward.
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