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Britons are getting fatter, this week as it was reported that Ambulance fleets across the country are being revamped with wider stretchers and lifting gear to cope with the increasing number of fat patients.
Every ambulance service in the UK has started buying the specialist equipment, according to data obtained by the BBC from freedom of information requests.
Standard ambulances are being stocked with heavy-duty wheelchairs, stretchers and lifting cushions.
But many services have also bought “bariatric” ambulances, costing up to £90,000 each, to ferry the most obese.
The specialist ambulances are equipped with double-width trolley stretchers to accommodate patients weighing up to 50 stone (318lb) and also tend to include hoists and inflatable lifting cushions.
Cushions cost about £2,500 and stretchers between £7,000 to £10,000 while reinforcing an ambulance tail-lift costs about £800 per vehicle, the BBC said.
Jo Webber, director of the Ambulance Service Network, said ambulance bosses had been left with no option.
She told the BBC: “The fact is patients are getting larger and larger and ambulances need to be able to respond immediately to what could be life-threatening situations.
“Every service is having to invest money in this. It shows that some of the lifestyle changes we are seeing have a range of costs. It is not just about treating them, but the infrastructure costs as well.”
Every ambulance trust in England, as well as the services in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland confirmed changes were being made although the pace of the approach varied, according to the data.
And that is not all. The Daily Mail reported that A crematorium is building a super-sized incinerator to cater for obese people.
Taxpayers are funding a £145,000 furnace that can burn coffins up to 41in wide at Cambridge City Crematorium.
Staff have increasingly had to turn grieving families away because their deceased relatives were too large to fit in the current machines.
Cambridge City Crematorium: Incinerators will be widened to fit 43in coffins
Cambridge City Council, which manages the crematorium, said the move was necessary to deal with the growing obesity problem in Britain.
A quarter of adults in England now being officially classed as obese.
Councillor Tim Bick, the community health chief, said: ‘We want to make provision for us to be able to cremate wider bodies than we can at the moment.
‘There is some evidence there is a demand for that in the sense that on several occasions we have been unable to meet the need when people have come to us for cremation.’
The super-size FTIII incinerator will be installed next year, alongside two conventional ones, which can cremate bodies up to 33in wide.
Cambridge City Crematorium manager Tracy Lawrence said: ‘It will allow us to serve that local need rather than having to turn away a grieving family and send them to another crematorium that could be miles away.’