Heat in Europe: Good wine & 3,000 deaths in France

Brewing giant Carlsberg-Tetley was forced to ship in emergency supplies of lager from abroad because of this summer's heatwave, it emerged today.

The company said the soaring temperatures in the last two months have led to a 40% increase in sales across the country as drinkers sought to quench their thirst.
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"Right now, every moment of the day is counting. We've been manning the equipment for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Not a moment is being spared."

French death report points finger
Poor communication and the absence of doctors on August leave were among the factors behind France's heatwave tragedy, an official report has found.
The 35-hour week also contributed, says the inquiry, set up to examine why more than 11,400 people died.

The report describes what happened as a "health catastrophe".

It found that health authorities were not fully aware of the unfolding crisis on the ground.

Many of the dead were elderly people, unable to cope as temperatures soared to 40C (104F).

The inquiry was set up by Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei after the government was criticised for its slow response to the crisis.
Information on the scale of the crisis was not pooled because the health ministry, other government departments and workers on the ground were so compartmentalised, the report says.

The August leave system - which also meant the cabinet was absent as the crisis took hold - comes in for strong criticism.

The mass departure of doctors on holiday had a severe impact on the working of the emergency system, it says.


It suggests better organisation of the healthcare system, liaison between weather services, hospitals and those caring for the elderly, and better provision of beds for elderly patients.
"An adequate alert, watch and information system would have allowed those involved to act more quickly in implementing meausres to adapt the health care system, " said the report.

France's surgeon-general resigned last month after ministers publicly blamed his department for failing to alert them to the crisis.

On Monday, officials in the Netherlands said as many as 1,400 Dutch people died in the heatwave between June and August.

The total is up on an earlier Dutch official estimate that between 500 and 1,000 people died.

In August - the peak of the extreme heat - temperatures repeatedly topped 30C, in a country where the average would normally have been 22C (72F).

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/3091244.stm

Published: 2003/09/08 16:09:11 GMT

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PARIS, Sept 8 (AFP) - A breakdown in communication in France's health care system and vacationing doctors were to blame for the crisis sparked by last month's heat wave, which killed more than 11,000, according to an official report released Monday.
"An adequate alert, watch and information system would have allowed those involved to act more quickly in implementing measures to adapt the health care system" to help those at risk, said the team of experts who drafted the report, the first official probe into what went wrong during the heat wave.
The experts said the "compartmentalization of services between the (health) ministry, other ministries and workers on the ground prevented a pooling of available information" about the scope of the health emergency.
"An error in anticipation, organization and coordination -- the response was not suited" to the situation, they noted.
More than 11,000 mainly elderly people succumbed to the blistering heat that blanketed France during the first two weeks of August, a toll that shocked the nation and sparked public fury over the government's handling of the crisis.
The report qualified the heat wave as a "catastrophe", saying it had revealed "a noticeable gap between the perception of health authorities and the reality of the crisis on the ground."
The experts also criticized the lack of available doctors and hospital beds during the heat wave, noting the "departure en masse by general practitioners taking holiday" had had a "serious effect on the functioning of emergency services".
According to the report, the implementation of the 35-hour work week -- especially during the traditional August holiday period -- also made it difficult to ensure the adequate staffing of medical facilities.
The medical experts commissioned by Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei recommended that the state's health monitoring institute work closely with hospital and weather services to create a "simple and sturdy alert system".
It also called for an improvement in the organization of emergency health care services nationwide, specialized services for the elderly, and a review of air conditioning needs in hospitals and retirement homes.
France's center-right government, especially Mattei, has come under intense criticism in the past month for failing to anticipate the crisis, but the embattled minister -- due to speak before parliament on Thursday -- has rejected calls for his resignation.
The country's surgeon general, Lucien Abenhaim, stepped down amidst the controversy, but later said he had alerted authorities to the looming disaster and felt he was a scapegoat.
Also criticized were relatives of some of the victims, who abandoned their elderly loved ones during the heat wave, when temperatures soared repeatedly to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), to go on holiday.
At one point, the bodies of some 400 Parisians who died alone remained unclaimed in makeshift city morgues. President Jacques Chirac attended the burial last week of 57 residents of the French capital who were never claimed.
The union of general practitioners, MG-France, reacted angrily to the report, with union leader Pierre Costes telling AFP: "After the families, the generalists are the scapegoats."

AP: Europe Heat Wave Killed Some 19,000

The heat wave that scorched Europe in August killed more than 19,000 people, according to official estimates tallied by The Associated Press, making it one of the most deadly natural disasters in the past century. The death toll may be higher: the AP survey of a dozen countries found that two _ Germany and Spain _ have attributed only a fraction of summer fatalities to heat so far.

France _ by far the hardest hit _ on Thursday reported a staggering heat wave death toll of 14,802. Scientists at INSERM, the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, reached the figure by counting the number of deaths over and above what would be expected for the month of August. The toll exceeds an earlier government count of 11,435, a figure based on deaths in only the first two weeks of the month, when Sahara-like temperatures gripped the continent.

No comprehensive Europe-wide toll exists, and the dimensions of the tragedy may never be known since nations are using different measures to determine heat-related deaths. The French compared the spike in mortality rates this summer to last and attributed the full difference to the record heat.

The AP conducted its survey over the past two weeks, obtaining information from government and nongovernment sources, including national Health Ministries, government statistics offices, mortuaries and ambulance services.

Italy followed the same formula for counting heat deaths as the French. The Health Ministry said 1,176 more Italians died in the first two weeks of August in the nation's 21 largest cities compared to the same period a year ago. The number will surely rise once figures are in for all of August. Italian authorities earlier reported a 4,175-person increase in deaths nationwide for July 16-Aug. 15.

The Spanish Health Ministry put its official toll at just 141, saying it counted only people whose deaths were specifically attributed to temperature-related conditions such as heatstroke. But the ministry also said there were 4,230 more deaths last month than in August 2002.

"Having seen the results from the other countries, 141 seems like an underestimation," said Betina Menne, of the European Global Change and Health Program at the World Health Organization in Rome. She added that WHO had not yet seen the complete study.

In Germany, only 40 people are on official record as dying from the heat. The medical division of the German Weather Service is still compiling a country total, although it is unclear whether the federal government will do the same.

However, an AP survey of government statistics offices, ambulance services and undertakers showed that at least 806 more people died in 15 major cities and two states in August 2003 than in the same month last year. Similar figures from the other 14 states were not available.

Rolf-Peter Lange, director of the German Association of Undertakers, which represents about 80 percent of the nation's undertakers, expects up to a 10 percent increase in deaths for August, based on reports from funeral homes.

"I believe it can be linked to the heat," Lange said.

Other August official heat wave death tolls include:

_ Portugal: 1,300.

_ The Netherlands: between 1,000 and 1,400.

_ Britain: 907.

_ Belgium: 150.

_ Balkan nations of Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro: 7.

_ Sweden: zero, although temperatures were unseasonably high.

Some cities suffered far more than others, as the German example shows.

In Offenbach, near Frankfurt along the Main River, 83 people died in August, compared to only 37 during the same month in 2002 _ an increase of 124 percent. Frankfurt reported a 21 percent rise in the number of deaths in August, from 590 to 714, although city officials haven't blamed the jump on the heat.

Cologne reported a 16 percent increase in deaths in August, 127 more than in the same month of 2002. Stuttgart showed a 32 percent increase in deaths for August, up to 276 from 209 in 2002.

Despite difficulties in counting casualties, Europe's heat wave of 2003 stands as one of the deadliest weather phenomenon in the last century.

A sizzling July in 1901 baked the midwestern United States, claiming more than 9,500 lives, according to a report in NOAA, the former magazine of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That exceeded the death toll of 8,000 from a hurricane a year earlier that struck Galveston, Texas, often cited as the deadliest weather event of the 1900s.

In its duration and in temperatures reached, the heat wave was France's worst, surpassing the previous hottest summer in 1947, according to Meteo France, the national weather service. The death count from that year was not available.

The relentless heat set new records across Europe. France experienced suffocating temperatures of up to 104 degrees. In the German city of Roth in Bavaria, the temperature hit nearly 105 on Aug. 9. London experienced the hottest day in its history on Aug. 6 _ 95.7, beating the 95 recorded in 1990.

The intense heat also caused billions of dollars in damage, withering crops, sparking wildfires, decimating livestock and melting Alpine glaciers. But by far, the greatest loss was human _ mostly the frail and elderly who died quietly because their bodies were unable to cope with the temperatures.

"These were, on the whole, people who were older and weaker," said Bas Kuik, spokesman for the Dutch Health Ministry.

In France, authorities placed part of the blame on inadequate care for the elderly and absence of medical personnel in August, a traditional vacation period when residents leave cities and doctors are hard to find. As temperatures soared in the first two weeks of August, elderly victims _ alone at home without air conditioning or at overwhelmed nursing homes and hospitals _ began to die of heat stroke, dehydration and other heat-related maladies at alarming rates.