Firefighters have lifted more than 2,000 obese patients from their homes and into ambulances since 2017, shocking figures show
- Crews were called out to deal with cases up to twice a day since the start of 2017
- Kent Fire service extracted over 560 obese or overweight patients in that time
- Experts said lives at risk as firefighters are being diverted from normal duties
Firefighters have had to lift more than 2,000 obese patients from their homes and into ambulances in the last three years, shocking figures show.
Health experts said lives are being put at risk because crews are being diverted from their normal duties.
A Freedom of Information request into Britain’s 53 fire services revealed crews were called out to deal with the cases up to twice a day since the start of 2017.
Kent Fire and Rescue extracted more than 560 obese or overweight patients from their homes in that time, while the brigade in Hertfordshire recorded 118 cases.
Firefighters have prised more than 2,000 obese patients from their homes and loaded them into ambulances in the last three years
Britain’s fattest woman Georgia Davis (pictured) was famously extracted from her home during a seven-hour operation in 2015
The rescue operation involved two cranes, seven police cars and two fire engines to free her
Crews in Northern Ireland were called out almost 200 times, while the number reached 238 in Mid and West Wales, one of the country’s three services.
There was huge variation across postcodes, with the fire brigade in Shropshire dealing with just 10 patients, The i reports.
It is believed the number of rescues may be even higher, however, as not every service provided firefighter figures or gave information in the same timeframe.
The fire and rescue services in Gloucestershire and Suffolk said they do not ‘transport’ patients on behalf of the ambulance service. They declined to answer if they ‘helped’ in some circumstances.
Firefighters are called in when patients needing to be transported to hospital are too large to get out of their home.
Crews will often have to remove windows, doors and even chunks of wall or roof to get the person out.
They may need to deploy cranes, special slings and a stretcher, depending on the type of property.
The extraordinary figures have today led to calls from experts for further government action amid the obesity epidemic gripping the country.
Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said lives elsewhere were being put at risk every time firefighters had to help obese patients.
He added: ‘The escalating number of people having to be winched from their bedrooms to undergo weight loss surgery in hospital is testimony to three decades of Whitehall’s completely inadequate measures to tackle obesity.
‘Successive governments have dithered since the 1990s to take the bold moves needed in the misplaced hope that the epidemic, dubbed a “timebomb” by 2003, would never go off.
‘It did. The UK is now paying £24billion a year in cleaning up the mess which, in the majority of cases, could have been avoided.
‘We are not winning the war on obesity and never will until government gets really serious about the issue.’
Britain has one of the highest rates of obesity in western Europe, with rates rising even faster than those in the US.
Almost one in three adults are now obese, with the condition known to cause cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
And a third of children leaving primary school are overweight or obese, with UK rates now thought to be twice the level of 1993.
Diabetes UK said the spike in obesity rates is the main driver for the similar jump in cases of type 2 diabetes in the past decade.
Figures estimate around 4.2million people in the UK have the condition, which can cause blindness, limb amputations and even death.