Why did 10,000 more Britons die than usual in first 7 weeks of year?

MOre than 10,000 more people died in the first few weeks of 2018 than is usual for the time of year.

experts say the additional deaths in england and Wales – the equivalent of one every seven minutes – are not the result of flu or bad weather.

Health officials have acknowl-edged the 12 per cent rise but have so far given no indication of any possible causes.

researchers at Oxford univer-sity and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine are calling for an investigation into the rising death rates.

They say it is unlikely that a single factor such as a virus is to blame because the increase has not happened elsewhere in europe or in Asia.

instead, they suggest the cause will probably be far more com-plex, pointing to problems in nHS hospitals and social care.

An editorial in the British Medical Journal questioned whether rates could have been even higher if more hospital beds had not been made availa-ble this winter.

Danny Dorling, professor of geography at Oxford, said: ‘it’s possible that the emergency ending of operations and open-ing up the beds has averted something even worse.

‘We’ve had a very big increase in the number of deaths and it’s not because of the flu. We had another similar increase in 2015 as well. These two things are unprecedented in the post-war period so the concentration of deaths looks to be when the whole health and social care sys-

‘Things are getting worse’

tem is doing particularly badly, then those who are particularly frail are more likely to die.

‘The underlying thing is that we have had this incredible slowdown in health improve-ments since 2010, but really things are getting worse.’ in the first seven weeks of 2018 there were 93,990 deaths in england and Wales, compared with an average of 83,615 over the same weeks in the previous five years.

it comes after Public Health england warned there had been a rise in mortality rates this winter. Professor Paul Cosford, PHe medical director, said last week: ‘There has been a period of about four weeks or so during which mortality has been higher than we would have expected.

‘in week six [the week ending February 11] there is about 11,300 or so deaths in an aver-age year, but we have had prob-ably about 12,400-12,500.’

Lucinda Hiam, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: ‘The Depart-ment of Health and Social Care is not taking the slowdown in improvements in mortality seri-ously. The figures for this year make the case for an investiga-tion both stronger and more urgent with each passing day.’

The Department of Health and Social Care said: ‘We are committed to helping people live long and healthy lives, which is why the nHS was given top priority in the autumn budget, with an extra £2.8bil-lion, on top of a planned £10bil-lion-a-year increase by 2020/21.

‘We will consider this and other new research in this area.’