2023-08-28 16:30:03
JJune and July 2023 were the hottest months ever recorded on our planet. August flares up: peaks and unprecedented heatwaves multiply, with 43°C in the American West – and up to 54°C in Death Valley (California) –, more than 40°C in China, 45°C in C in Italy and Greece, more than 40°C in the south and south-east of France. Some places on the globe are becoming inhospitable, others frankly hostile to man.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke of entering a “era of boiling”, calling on politicians to take swift and responsible decisions to mitigate and counter accelerating global warming. The survival of populations is at stake: to date, 3.5 billion people live in a very vulnerable environment.. If the global warming trend continues, more than 2 billion people might be exposed to extreme and dangerous heat by the end of the century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Nearly 20,000 deaths in 2023
The most vulnerable to heat waves, however, have no right to speak, suffering in silence. The oldest and chronically ill in particular pay a heavy price during temperature peaks, especially where water, agricultural, health and economic resources are the weakest. The homeless are also very exposed to extreme heat, without resources to cope with it, as in Phoenix (Arizona) this summer. Migrants, such as those abandoned in the Tunisian desert, also endure the burden of heat waves, deprived of the essentials, their lives threatened.
And in France, what realities? A first observation: heat waves always claim victims. From 2014 to 2022, from June 15 to 1is September, Public Health France counted nearly 33,000 deaths directly linked to heat waves and heat waves (including 23,000 people aged 75 and over), a figure that is undoubtedly underestimated. In addition, the areas most exposed to extreme heat are home to nearly 1.2 million people living below the poverty line (Insee, 2022).
We know the health impact of high heat on the most vulnerable: impaired thermal regulation in the elderly, impossibility to escape the heat and hydrate, increased heat stress, drug iatrogenic [effets indésirables provoqués par la prise d’un ou de plusieurs médicaments] among the chronically ill… All of this being reinforced by the lack of access to care and water, by poorly insulated housing, or even by the absence of housing.
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