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Fernando Uceta, who has COPD, uses a portable oxygen concentrator to breathe as he sits on the balcony of his home during the summer heatwave, in Barcelona’s Raval neighbourhood, Spain, June 27, 2023.
© 2023 Nacho Doce/Reuters
“It is unthinkable for me to go out. I could get a heatstroke,” Esther Laforge, 35, messaged me earlier this month. Esther, who lives outside of the Spanish city of Seville where temperature is expected to hit 40 degrees Celsius this week, has a physical disability that affects her body temperature regulation.
As Spain experiences another devastatingly hot summer, with more than eight consecutive days of heatwaves in July alone, many people with disabilities are exposed to heat-related risks.
In 2023, Human Rights Watch documented extreme heat’s impacts on people with disabilities living in Andalusia, a region in southern Spain particularly susceptible to heatwaves. In addition to findings about the serious physical and mental health consequences heat has for people with disabilities, we also found gaps in public responses to protect them. These included a lack of outreach services and heat-related information in different formats such as easy-to-read, lack of participation of people with disabilities in shaping responses, and lack of data, including on heat-related deaths for people with disabilities.
With the summer of 2024 long underway, deaths related to extreme heat are climbing fast. The Momo Index—run by the Carlos III Health Institute, Spain’s primary health statistics agency—indicates that between July and mid-August, more than 1,200 deaths were associated with extreme temperatures, more than 95% aged 65 and older.
Exactly how many people with disabilities died due to extreme heat across Spain is unclear, but more than half of people with disabilities registered are 65 and older. And despite calls for better data, a Carlos III Health Institute official told us the agency still doesn’t have information on disability and heat-related deaths and that designing a study would be too difficult. The lack of data, and of concrete data collection plans, is concerning because if people remain uncounted, they stay invisible in monitoring, reporting, and protection systems.
Numerous studies have shown that people with disabilities are disproportionately represented in deaths during heat events. For example, in Canada, 91 percent of those who died in a 2021 heat dome in British Columbia had a disability or a chronic health condition.
Extreme heat is projected to become more frequent and intense due to climate change. The rights to health and life of people with disabilities, like Esther, must be protected. Spain should investigate and monitor the relationship between disability, heat, and heat-related deaths to better protect this group and provide effective, evidence-based targeted services.
