By: Gracie Dykes

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC – At 92, long-time resident Jaroslav Beneš feels Prague’s heatwaves in ways most people never notice. When temperatures hit 35°C at the end of June, his small apartment became an oven. 

“The windows in both the bedroom and the kitchen face the same direction, so we can’t cross‑ventilate,” he said, describing nights when the air barely moved and sleep was impossible. 

Even the usual fixes come with risks. “If you use a fan, you just end up catching a cold afterward,” he explained.

And the heat brings quieter worries that rarely make headlines. “Some apartments are empty, so there’s warm water in the water system,” he said. “We’re worried about that because of salmonella.” 

For Jaroslav, these aren’t abstract concerns; they’re the daily realities of aging through a heatwave in a city still learning how to protect its oldest residents.

The Czech Republic reached record high temperatures in late June 2026 during the heatwave that affected vast swaths of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, with over 191 million people enduring temperatures of 35°C or higher. The week ending June 28 saw an estimated 14,260 excess heat‑related deaths—the number of fatalities exceeding what historical trends would predict—across more than 24 European countries. Over 80% of these deaths occurred among people aged 65 and older.

1 in 5 residents in Czechia are aged 65 and older, with numbers certainly rising as life expectancy continues to trend upwards. Roughly 35,000 to 50,000 elderly in the capital city Prague are considered to be “at risk,” which refers to seniors facing a high peril of social exclusion, poverty, or loss of self-sufficiency. In combination with the fact that Prague recorded the lowest birth rate among all regions in the Czech Republic in 2025, the seemingly ever growing senior population needs to have a support system that adequately cares for their needs in crises such as intensive heat. 

Systematic support for older adults in the Czech Republic is far less established than many might assume.

“Assistance to seniors during heat waves is currently not addressed in any special way,” says Dr. Helena Kazmarová, the head of the Health and Environment Center at the State Institute of Public Health in Prague. “…services are not specifically organized in response to heatwave risks. Volunteers do visit seniors, but again, not in a way directly tied to heatwave alerts.”

The largest service gap for elderly care in the context of heatwave events is that there is currently no coordinated, nationwide system for identifying and assisting vulnerable seniors in the Czech Republic, despite elderly populations only growing and temperatures only increasing. 

Countries such as Germany, France, and Belgium have recorded thousands of excess heat‑related deaths for the June-July 2026 heatwave, while Czechia does not have an official record of excess heat mortality as of the date this article was posted. This absence of official data may stem from gaps in reporting rather than an actual lack of heat‑related fatalities, though the former is the more likely explanation.

The national government is aware of the issue of heatwaves and susceptible elderly populations, but is not currently planning mass-scale intervention. 

“Basically, when it’s hot, just help each other out; if you’re a senior and you’re sick, let someone know, but also, if you know of someone in that situation, report it,” says the office of Marek Šplíchal, the head of the Department of Public Relations for the Czech Republic Ministry of Health. “But I don’t think the government is actively doing anything about it right now.”

If the government is not providing direct efforts to help senior citizen care in heatwave events, then who is? 

The elderly care system is legally decentralized in the Czech Republic, meaning the national government does not directly provide day-to-day care but instead delegates the entire operational responsibility to non-profit organizations and other regional authorities. Under the Social Services Act, the state acts purely as a regulator and primary financier. The national government funnels public funds and state care allowances downward while leaving the actual execution of identifying who needs help, how much help, home care, personal assistance, and nursing entirely to NGOs. Because public authorities rarely run these services themselves, the system essentially relies on a network of non-profits to bridge the gap between state funding and hands-on community care.

Czechia is aging rapidly, with the number of older adults now outpacing the number of children—a demographic shift that places increasing pressure on health and social‑care systems as summers grow hotter each year. Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense across Central Europe, raising the stakes for a population that is physiologically more vulnerable to extreme temperatures. 

Jan František Krupa, the National Director of Social Services for the Salvation Army in the Czech Republic reflects on the service gap. “In the Czech Republic, as in other Western countries, the number of seniors is rising relative to the number of economically active people. Finding resources to expand care for them—and supporting healthy demographic growth—must be a priority for any government.”

Large numbers of seniors are left without adequate help when temperatures spike, mainly because coordinated, professional assistance remains fragmented and inconsistent. Those at greatest risk are the individuals who live in isolation, yet no active, nationwide plan exists to identify or protect them, even as nonprofit groups and public‑health experts continue calling for greater awareness and intervention. 

Czechia has many organizations that support older adults, but experts note that the city still lacks a coordinated government system for identifying and assisting seniors during extreme heat. In practice, this leaves much of the responsibility to nonprofits and community groups, which often end up providing the bulk of frontline support when temperatures rise.

A future event more severe than the 2026 heatwave could leave isolated seniors without timely support, creating situations where preventable harm becomes collateral. The risk isn’t theoretical—it’s structural, and it grows a little more each summer.