Aged care deaths set to rise as national heat increases

The number of older Australians dying from the effects of extreme heat due to climate change is expected to continue to rise over the next decades, with added heat stress also likely to hit workplaces and productivity.

Consultants Net Balance, found that the number of days with an average temperature above 30 degrees would double by 2050, from two days to four days annually, even if governments took action to cut greenhouse emissions.

Over time extreme heat has increased deaths among Melburnians aged 65 and over by nearly a fifth and Nicole Joffe of Net Balance said the results asked questions about how people adapted to climate change.

“We need to look at air-conditioning and evaporative cooling as a start, but we also need policymakers to drive innovation in the area so we can find other solutions,” Ms Joffe said.

A separate study by the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research found that future bushfires were likely to increase pollution substantially over Melbourne, which would reduce air quality and lead to more cases of potentially fatal respiratory illnesses.

62% Increase in Casualties

The sudden extreme heat period in Victoria between 26 January and 1 February this year killed at least 374 Victorians resulting in a 62% increase in casualties compared to previous years.

The average number of deaths in previous years had been around 606 while this year it jumped to 980 as temperatures increased to more than 15 degrees above average. The extra death toll, mainly in people over 65, was more than twice the number of people killed in the Black Saturday fires in Victoria.

A report released into the heatwave this week by Victoria’s chief medical officer, Dr John Carnie, suggested that the elderly and the chronically ill made up the bulk of the casualty list.

As temperatures soared paramedics were called to nearly three times as many heart-attack victims and there was a threefold increase in the number of patients dead on arrival at emergency hospital departments.

Dr.Carnie said that “we do know that some people are more vulnerable to the complications of heat-related stress and these are the elderly people and people with chronic health conditions and so on. We don’t know if some of these deaths were going to occur in the days or weeks after the heat event and they were just brought forward by the heat”.

But Dr Carnie said that most of the elderly deaths were of people living alone rather than those living in nursing homes. However exact locations could not be released publicly because of the privacy provisions attached to the gathering of the data by paramedics, emergency departments, and the coroner.