The majority of people over 75 live alone and about 200,000 older people in the UK have not had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month, according to government data
By Lee Mannion
LONDON, Jan 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Britain has appointed a minister for loneliness to take forward the work of murdered lawmaker Jo Cox and tackle the isolation felt by more than one in ten people in the UK.
Sports minister Tracey Crouch will take on the new role, in addition to her existing job, and develop a strategy to address the problem, which research has linked with dementia, early mortality and high blood pressure.
"We should all do everything we can to see that, in Jo's memory, we bring an end to the acceptance of loneliness for good," British Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement.
"For far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life."
Cox was murdered by a right-wing extremist in 2016, after being in parliament for little more than a year.
The majority of people over 75 live alone and about 200,000 older people in the UK have not had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month, according to government data.
Most doctors in Britain see between one and five patients a day who have come mainly because they are lonely, according to the Campaign to End Loneliness, a network tackling the health threat isolation poses to the elderly.
The Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, which the 41-year-old lawmaker set up shortly before her death, had called for a minister to be appointed to lead action on the issue.
"Jo would be over the moon," her husband, Brendan Cox tweeted.
(Reporting by Lee Mannion @leemannion, Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
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