France’s heatwave: Why did so many die?

Date: 13/09/03

Everyone blames everyone else for France's heatwave calamity

WAS the death toll 3,000? Or 11,000? Or 15,000? Nearly a month after last month's heatwave, when temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), it is still unclear how many died. Having initially conceded only 3,000 victims, the government now admits that 11,435 more people than usual died during the first two weeks of August. The Pompes Funebres Generales, the country's biggest funeral group, reckons the excess figure for the whole month was over 15,000.

It is hard to know how many deaths were caused by the heat. The estimates are based on comparing the number of deaths registered this August with those in the same month in previous years. The toll this time was the highest since records began in 1946. At least 80% of the dead were over 75, according to a government agency's sample study. If the heat didn't kill them, then what did?

Ever since the grim pictures of unclaimed bodies being retrieved from apartment buildings and stacked up in refrigerated warehouses began to appear on television screens, the country has been agonising about whose fault this calamity was. Some doctors blame the 35-hour-week and consequent lack of hospital staff. The official report, out this week, neatly shares the blame: hospitals closed too many wards in August; too many family doctors went off on holiday; government departments were poorly co-ordinated; the health-surveillance institute failed to give an early warning. In short, everybody was to blame - except, that is, the government.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the prime minister, has tried to deflect criticism by dwelling on the neglect of French families and bemoaning “the indifference of fellow human beings, of relatives, of neighbours, to curtains that are drawn.”

But the government is disingenuous. Many frail and elderly people would probably have died even if the government had taken the earliest warnings more seriously. But it did not. On August 11th, the health minister, Jean-François Mattei, was still on holiday, being interviewed in shirt-sleeves in his garden. The prime minister did not return to Paris until the 14th. And President Jacques Chirac, on holiday in Canada, jetted home only on the 20th.

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