The pioneering study points to “a statistically significant general increase in daily hospital admissions during heatwave days”, with children and young people up to 18 years of age being the most affected (21.7%) and the elderly (17.2%).

According to researchers from ENSP at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and the CoLAB + Atlantic Center, heat waves caused an increase in hospitalisations, between 7% and 34.3%, in 25 major causes of illness.

"On average, on heatwave days, hospitalisations increased by 34% for burns, 27% for multiple traumas, 25% for infectious diseases, 25% for endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases, 23% for mental illnesses, 22% for diseases of the respiratory system and 16% for diseases of the circulatory system, among others”, highlights the study published in the scientific journal Lancet Planetary Health.

“The study is very comprehensive in the sense that it covers more than 12 million hospitalisations that took place in mainland Portugal over practically two decades (2000 to 2018)”, the first author of the investigation, Ana Margarida Alho, told Lusa.

Hospitalisation data is crossed with daily air temperature data for the 278 municipalities in mainland Portugal, explained the researcher.

The results conclude that “more than 70% of the territory has an increase in hospitalisations during heatwaves”, with the most substantial increases occurring in the Northern regions, including the metropolitan areas of Porto, and Lisbon, with the group younger (under 18 years old) particularly affected in the interior and southern regions.