UK appoints minister for loneliness

It sounds weird, right? but UK has just created a “minister for loneliness” to tackle modern public health problems associated with social isolation.

The appointment on Wednesday was made in memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox, to help tackle the isolation felt by millions of Britons.

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 on Wednesday.

For far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life.

MP Cox was murdered by a right-wing extremist in 2016, after being in parliament for little more than a year.

According to government data.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.

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.