Preventable Tragedy

It is easy to deride the French these days; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has built a virtual stand-up comedy routine out of France bashing. But when it comes to the deaths of thousands of French during this month’s heat wave, there are serious lessons to be learned.

The number of deaths is staggering. Health officials admit the number could be as high as 10,000. Less than 10 percent as many people died of severe acute respiratory syndrome, yet SARS was quickly declared an international epidemic with vast resources devoted to its containment and study of its origin. Despite the high death toll, the situation in France is met more with scorn than concern.

Obviously, this shouldn’t have happened. France is a highly developed country with a touted system of socialized medicine, yet thousands of its citizens, many of them senior citizens, perished because of the extreme heat. President Jacques Chirac has blamed families for leaving behind elderly relatives while they headed to cooler climes for their August vacation, noting that the death toll was much lower in Spain and Italy, where the heat was just as bad. In those countries, the extended family has not deteriorated as far as it has in France (and the United States, presumably), the reasoning goes. Opposition leaders have blamed the mandated shortened workweek and the practice of closing portions of hospitals while doctors and nurses take the customary month of August off. Both are right and wrong.

Americans don’t have a good track record of looking after our elders either, but it also doesn’t have thousands of them perishing during heat waves. One reason is air conditioning. Three in four American homes have air conditioning and it is commonplace in offices, restaurants and shops. Air conditioning has long been scorned in Europe where natural cooling was preferred – until this summer, the hottest on record in centuries in some parts of the continent.

But, heat waves have had dire consequences here too. In 1995, 739 people died during extremely hot weather in Chicago. Then Mayor Richard Daley exhorted the city’s residents to check on their elderly neighbors and family members. The city also came up with an extreme weather operations plan, which included increasing visits by police officers to the elderly, disabled and homebound and distribution of fans by the city’s Housing Authority. More than 500,000 pamphlets were distributed to residents who could mail in cards to request that someone check on them during dangerously hot weather. The plan had positive results. During a 1999 heat wave 103 deaths were reported.

Heat waves cannot be stopped – it is surprising that the French have not yet blamed the United States with its love for SUVs and refusal to sign onto treaties to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases linked to global warming for its high death toll. But, with the aid of air conditioners and a little familial and neighborly concern, they are certainly survivable.