Britain is designing larger ambulances to transport obese patients

#Ambulance #Obesity Obesity is a curse for not only the obese but also to the medical services in Britain and, in order to transport such people to hospitals, the normal ambulances are not usable. Hence, hundreds of ambulances are being specially designed to deal with those patients who weigh more than 50 stone.
Moreover, ambulance chiefs are having plans to upgrade their fleet with wider doors, a stretcher for patients weighing 56 stone and a device which can carry a person up to 34 stone down a flight of stairs.
In view of the fact that a quarter of British adults are obese, experts feel that spending up to £100,000 for specialist ambulances is an indication for the need to introduce tougher measures to stop people from putting on weight.
It is interesting to note that the ambulance services had started to introduce few specially equipped 'bariatric' vehicles about four years ago to deal with the growing obesity epidemic. However, the current figures revealed under the Freedom of Information Act that, at present, the number of such special purpose ambulances in the UK is around 800.
One trust, the East of England Ambulance Service, recently carried out trials of the new wider ambulances and over a period of eight months, were called upon 260 times. The call-outs were mostly for falls or for patients with blood poisoning.
The magnitude of the problem would be evident from the fact that North East Ambulance Service has two bariatric vehicles which it deployed just 29 cases in 2008-09 and, last year, the figure had risen to 798 times.