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To: Taki who wrote (118945)	9/8/2003 1:31:57 PM
From: Taki	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 150070

Unreal.COMTEX)B: France Blames Heat-Deaths on Hospitals B: France Blames Heat-Deaths on Hospitals The government has said 11,435 people died in the heat in early August, when temperatures soared to 104. PARIS, Sep 08, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- France's first official investigation into why thousands of elderly people died in a brutal summer heat wave partly blamed hospitals, which let doctors leave for August vacations, according to a report released Monday. Also Monday, the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics estimated 1,000 to 1,400 people died in the Netherlands from the heat this summer - higher than an earlier projection of 500 to 1,000. The report also said health authorities were too slow to realize how serious the situation was in emergency rooms. The government has said 11,435 people died in the heat in early August, when temperatures soared to 104. Some critics have also blamed the deaths on understaffed retirement homes and hospitals, August vacationers who left elderly relatives unattended, and government inaction. Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei had ordered the report from a team of specialists that included prominent doctors in gerontology, emergency medicine and epidemiology. Mattei is scheduled to address the French parliament Thursday. Michel Combier, president of the National General Practitioners Union, said it was unfair to blame doctors and other health-care workers for going on vacation at the same time as everyone else. "The problem wasn't that everyone was on vacation, but that the alert system was too weak to allow for hospitals to get everyone back working," Combier told The Associated Press. "And the catastrophe, of course, was totally unpredictable and out of the ordinary." Many victims were elderly, dying alone at home or in overwhelmed hospitals and nursing homes. Many lived in Paris, where temperatures were the highest since officials started keeping records in 1873. Some victims died while their families were away. Last week, 57 Parisians whose bodies were never claimed after they died in the heat wave were buried in a section of a suburban cemetery usually reserved for the destitute or homeless. Though the heat wave hit most of Europe, no other nation reported deaths anywhere near the scale of France - possibly because of the way they were counted here. France compared the number of deaths this August to previous years. Last month, the Dutch statistical bureau estimated the heat had caused 500-1,000 deaths, calculating there were 25 extra deaths per week for every degree above the normal summer temperatures of 72 degrees. But it said Monday that early data on the actual number of deaths indicated figures will be somewhere between 25 and 35 deaths per degree above normal. The bureau said those who died were mostly older people. Copyright 2003 Associated Press, All rights reserved -0- APO Priority=r APO Category=1103 (PROFILE (COUNTRY:France; ISOCOUNTRY3:FRA; UNTOP:150; UN2ND:155; APGROUP:Europe;) (COUNTRY:Netherlands; ISOCOUNTRY3:NLD; UNTOP:150; UN2ND:155; APGROUP:Europe;) ) KEYWORD: PARIS SUBJECT CODE: 1103 * end of story *