999 crews see rise in calls to help the obese

THE emergency services are facing more cases – and rising bills – for helping more obese people.

The number of cases nationwide has nearly doubled over the past five years, with unions saying ambulance staff and equipment are being pushed to their limits.

Figures from the Home Office show that Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service attended 46 callouts for “bariatric assistance” between April 2012 and March 2017.

Firefighters often need lifting equipment and special slings to transport people and sometimes have to remove windows, walls and banisters.

While they represent a small proportion of the service’s 10,000 non-fire incidents over the past few years, the majority of callouts took more than one hour to resolve.

One incident attended by county crews took over four hours.

Freedom of Information Act requests to some fire and rescue services have shown that the average cost of a callout is £400.

For some non-emergency cases, services have been able to recover costs since legislation was put in place in 2004.

Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service recorded 19 incidents in 2016-17.

In 2012-13, by comparison, there were five.

Across England, fire and rescue services attended 851 bariatric assistance cases in 201617, a 98 per cent increase on five years previously.

Unison’s national ambulance officer, Alan Lofthouse, said judgement on whether bariatric assistance was required was made by paramedics on a caseby-case basis.

He said: “Obesity can be a real issue for ambulance staff trying to help critically ill patients.

“Ambulance equipment has a safe working load and pushing the limit puts patients and staff at risk.

“In an emergency a paramedic has to make a judgment call on how best to help an obese patient, and in some instances this means calling for assistance from other services.”

Tam Fry, the chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “The leap in the frequency of cases in which fire crews have to winch very obese people from their homes is truly shocking.

“The figures will continue to rise, however, even if the Government was to implement drastic measures to combat the epidemic today.

“It’s the inevitable result of decades of Westminster failing to produce any strategy to help lessen the chances of the fat getting fatter.”