French raise toll to 15,000

PARIS — The heat wave that stifled France last month killed nearly 15,000 people, claiming more lives than previously thought, said a government-commissioned report released yesterday.

The study — conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research — said a total of 56,000 died in France in August, around 15,000 more than in an average year. Those additional deaths, they surmised, were a result of the heat wave.

An earlier government figure of 11,435 was based only on deaths in the first two weeks of the month, during the height of the heat wave that brought temperatures to a record-breaking 104 degrees. High temperatures in France during the summer normally hover around 75 degrees.

The new figure includes mortalities from the second half of August, when the heat had eased. Those victims apparently had been weakened during the heat wave.

The number of dead rose by more than double the normal rate in and around Paris, putting the crowded capital at the epicenter of the disaster. The average fatality rate across the country rose by 60 percent.

Scientists at the national institute attributed many of the additional deaths to dehydration, heatstroke and hyperthermia, followed by cardiovascular ailments and respiratory diseases. The “major and brutal increase” in the August death rate “was synchronous with the period of the heat wave,” the report said.

The report came one day after the French Parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly.

Many of the victims were elderly people who had been left alone at home when their families went on vacation in August, an annual tradition in France.

Some doctors and nurses, as well as retirement-home workers, also take their vacations during that time, resulting in staff shortages.

France’s health minister has ordered a separate study to investigate whether vacation schedules could have contributed to the death toll, a controversial move in a socialist country where monthlong vacations are seen as a basic human right. The National General Practitioners Union, however, says only about 20 percent of general practitioners were away during the heat wave.

President Jacques Chirac and other government leaders also have sought to place some of the blame on a breakdown in society, claiming France’s elderly are abandoned by their families.

Despite the widely publicized death toll, some relatives were slow to return from vacation to either identify or claim the bodies of the dead. The piles of corpses in the country’s morgues and hospitals served as grisly reminders of familial neglect.