Deaths of disabled people surge in Spain as heatwave worsens

“I’m afraid to go out because I might get heat stroke,” Esther Laforge, 35, texted me earlier this month. Esther lives outside Seville, Spain, where temperatures are expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius this week, and has a disability that prevents her from regulating her body temperature.

Spain has experienced another extremely hot summer, with more than eight consecutive days of heatwaves July Many people with disabilities face heat-related risks alone.

In 2023, Human Rights Watch Record Impacts of extreme heat on people with disabilities living in Andalucia, a region in southern Spain that is particularly vulnerable to heatwaves. In addition to finding that heat has serious impacts on the physical and mental health of people with disabilities, we also found gaps in public protection of people with disabilities. These gaps include a lack of outreach and heat-related information in different formats (such as Easy Read), a lack of participation of people with disabilities in the development of response measures, and a lack of data (including data on heat-related deaths among people with disabilities).

As the summer of 2024 approaches, the number of deaths related to extreme heat is increasing rapidly. Momo index— run by the Carlos III Health Institute, Spain’s primary health statistics agency — showed that extreme temperatures caused more than 1,200 deaths between July and mid-August, more than 95% of them among people aged 65 and over.

It is not clear how many disabled people have died from heatstroke in Spain, but more than half of those registered are aged 65 and over. Despite calls for better data, an official at the Carlos III Health Institute told us it still has no information on disability and heat-related deaths, and that designing a study is too difficult. The lack of data and concrete plans for data collection is worrying because if people are not counted, they cannot be seen by monitoring, reporting and protection systems.

Many studies have shown that people with disabilities disproportionately die during heatwaves, e.g. Canada91% of deaths in 2021 Heat Dome British Columbians with a disability or chronic illness.

Extremely hot weather Expected As climate change causes heatwaves to become more frequent and severe, the right to health and life of people with disabilities, like Esther, must be protected. Spain should investigate and monitor the relationship between disability, heatwaves, and heat-related deaths to better protect this group and provide effective, evidence-based, targeted services.