There were 944 cases of obese people needing to be rescued by the fire service in the last year in the UK, due to them being too large to move by themselves.
This number is more than a third higher than it was three years ago, having been 709 in 2012-13, figures attained by the BBC show. According to the National Obesity Forum (NOF), it isn’t necessarily that more people are obese, rather that obese people are actually getting bigger.
Tam Fry, of the NOF, said: “This is not about more people being obese. This is about those who are already obese now getting to a size where they now need assistance. Senior doctors I speak to say there are many people who do not leave their homes so they do not even put themselves in a position where they may need to be rescued. They are scared of being seen in public.”
Cases involving obese people are categorised as “bariatric” rescues, after this new rescue category was created back in 2012 for the fire service to use in their reports. There has been a year-on-year increase ever since in bariatric rescues being performed.
With 77 rescues, the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service performed the most bariatric rescues out of all 50 fire and rescue services in the UK in the past year.
Chris Jones, from the South Wales Fire Service, said: “Some of these incidents have become protracted overnight while we’ve needed to change certain elements to the building to make that rescue safe before we can bring the patient out.
“If we are doing what we call an external rescue where we’re taking the patient out through a window, quite commonly we’ll remove the window frame itself and we will actually sometimes drop courses of brickwork down to create that space.
“Internally we might have to take doors off, move furniture, we may even have to put supporting systems into the house to make sure everything’s structurally sound as well.”
Obesity is caused by an unhealthy diet, containing too much sugar and saturated fat, as well as a lack of exercise. It is important to include portions of fresh fruit and vegetables in your diet and take part in regular physical activity for a healthy lifestyle.
