Dr Lucien Abenhaïm, director general for health in the French government, resigned this week in the wake of a conflict over the death toll triggered by the recent heat wave. More than 3000, and possibly as many as 5000, deaths have been caused by the heat.
Figure 1.
Sunbathers at Paris's artificial beach, set up by the city authorities throughout August
Credit: FRANÇOIS GUILLOT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The heat related death rate in France has been much higher than in any other country in the European Union, and the government has been criticised for not taking preventive measures to protect the more fragile individuals, particularly elderly people.
The heat wave, which lasted for two weeks and was predicted by weather forecasters, started on 4 August. During that week, the number of deaths almost doubled compared with the same period last year. On 10 August, Dr Patrick Pelloux, president of the Union of Emergency Hospital Doctors, in an interview with the daily newspaper Le Parisien, said that health authorities did not react to a “veritable hecatomb” among elderly people, and called for a parliamentary investigation.
Socialists and the Ecological party joined in the criticism of what they described as government “inaction.” On 13 August, Dr Jean-François Mattei, minister for health, declared: “We are facing an epidemic.” He recognised that the public health alert system had not worked well.
Morgues and funeral parlours coped with an overflow of victims. Refrigerated storerooms were set up; and temporary workers hired to collect bodies from private homes and hotels. Grave diggers worked overtime.
On the following day, 14 August, Prime Minister Pierre Raffarin interrupted his holidays and called for a ministerial meeting about the effect of the heat wave on health.
On 18 August, Dr Abenhaïm, who was responsible for alerting the health ministry on public health matters, resigned, stating in an interview with the daily newspaper Le Figaro that despite the alerts sounded by emergency services, it was too late: “We had to deal with a veritable heat wave catastrophe whose consequences were not foreseeable and not preventable,” he said.
On the same day, Gilles Brücker, director of the institute of health surveillance recognised that he had not foreseen the “catastrophe.”
The daytime temperatures in Paris rose to 40ºC but were exacerbated because night time temperatures remained dangerously high, at 25.5ºC, for several nights running.
Last week 700 burials took place in Paris, compared with 450 a week normally during this period of the year.