http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20030829/sc_nm/france_heatwave_dc
France
Reports Over 11,435 Extra Deaths in Heat
Fri Aug 29, 2003, 12:35 PM ET
By Jon Boyle
PARIS (Reuters) - France
recorded 11,435 more deaths than usual
in the first two weeks of an August heat wave, adding pressure
on the government in a country that prides itself on having the
best health care system in the world.
Gilles Brucker, the
top medical official who broke the news
to Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei, said the final toll
could be even higher.
"These figures
do not show the full extent of the problem,"
he told France 2 television, adding that the total for all of
August should be available in late September.
The official figures
released Friday exceed any heat wave deaths
recorded in France's European neighbors and showed around 55 percent
more deaths than would have been expected.
Theories as to why
range from cuts in services for the elderly
to many old people being left alone while relatives went on vacation,
as most French people do in August.
The issue has even
forced the cash-strapped government to consider
axing a public holiday to fund better care for the old.
Retired people were
hit hardest by the worst heat wave since records
began in 1945, as temperatures soared above 104 F, causing dehydration
and hyperthermia.
The figures, higher
than an initial three-week estimate of
10,400 deaths from the country's leading undertaker, were
compiled from death certificates, health officials said.
"The human drama
of the heat wave has hit the most fragile
in our society. ... I am determined more than ever to make
changes to our health and welfare system," said Mattei,
who has resisted calls to resign.
GIVE UP HOLIDAY
The soaring summer
death toll shocked France, whose health
service came out top in a World Health Organization survey
in 2000, and stoked debate over the treatment of the elderly
in a country already struggling to get to grips with pension
reform.
The Le Parisien daily
published a poll Friday showing
70 percent of voters backed a plan to eliminate one public
holiday to finance a special fund for pensioners through
increased tax revenues that would result from greater output.
The Pentecost Monday
holiday, which usually occurs in May,
is seen as the most likely candidate, a move that has already
received the blessing of the Catholic Church.
The government was
sharply criticized for failing to react
fast enough to the crisis, which swamped hospitals and morgues.
Many bodies remain
unclaimed and refrigerator trucks and
even a warehouse in the Rungis wholesale food market outside
Paris became temporary morgues.
Scores of bodies have
been buried in paupers' graves until
relatives of the dead come forward. French media reported
that Paris City Hall at one stage estimated that the capital
had around 200-300 unclaimed bodies.
A Spanish rights group
alleges the heat wave claimed
2,000 victims in Spain, and Portugal blames the heat
for 1,300 deaths in a summer that saw swathes of forested
areas destroyed by fire.
France's top health
official has resigned.
