The Ministry of Health has launched, for yet another year, the National Plan for Preventive Actions for Low Temperatures, with measures to coordinate the institutions involved and serve the population, especially the most vulnerable groups in winter. The objective is to try to stop the 1,050 deaths it causes per year (slightly less than the 1,300 caused by heat waves). “This makes it necessary to articulate plans to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with cold waves,” says Julio Díaz, co-director of the Climate Change, Health and Urban Environment Unit of the National School of Health, Carlos III Health Institute ( ISCIII).
The intense cold negatively affects health, although only in very extreme cases do effects such as hypothermia or frostbite occur, states the Strategic Health and Environment Plan, prepared by the Ministries of Health and the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge.
What is more common is overstress on the body, which can lead to organic decompensation that aggravates chronic diseases in vulnerable populations.
In any case, the effects of low temperatures do not usually occur as sharply and suddenly as in the case of high temperatures. Julio Díaz explains that "there is a minimum daily temperature, which varies from one place to another, below which winter mortality increases sharply; this is what is called the cold wave definition temperature."
The effect of a cold wave, he explains, manifests itself up to 14 days later, says Díaz, who points out that this is because the mortality related to cold waves is partly related to respiratory diseases of an infectious nature, although there are also an increase in mortality related to cardiovascular diseases.
The main risk factors are related to not living in places that ensure a minimum comfortable temperature: places without heating or places where people with low income live, which means that even if they have heating they cannot turn it on, which is called energy poverty.
What does Health recommend to alleviate the effects of the cold?
