French hospitals brace for deadlier heat waves after record heat stress

Emergency medics in a Paris-region hospital had to borrow ice from a fast-food restaurant and buy more from a supermarket so they could plunge overheated patients into cold-water baths. France had already moved to the highest Orsan health alert, as emergency medical calls climbed 15% to 20% nationwide and by as much as 40% in cities including Paris and Rennes.

The strain reached a hard number in the capital: Paris recorded 25 cardiac arrests in 24 hours during the heat wave, compared with fewer than 10 on a typical day. In sweltering wards, staff turned off lights in some corridors to cut heat and moved patients into air-conditioned waiting rooms when they could. Santé publique France recorded the wave as the most severe ever at this time of year, with 90 departments on orange alert and 49 on red alert.

Sébastien Lecornu announced a 100-million-euro package for cooling systems in hospitals and related work to keep wards functioning, and France is buying 30,000 air-conditioning units for health facilities, with the first deliveries expected at the end of this week or the beginning of next week. Orsan lets officials mobilize extra medical staff, coordinate hospitals, doctors and care homes, and postpone non-urgent procedures when demand spikes.

The World Health Organization called the heat wave a "dress rehearsal" for harder summers and said Europe is warming at roughly twice the global average. It warned that high-intensity heat waves can bring high acute mortality and pointed to the 2003 European heat wave, which killed about 70,000 people, as the benchmark disaster still shaping public-health planning.

France recorded its hottest day on record on June 24, with an average national temperature of 30.0C. Spain logged its hottest June days on record, the United Kingdom issued a red extreme heat warning, and Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and the Czech Republic recorded new highs as the heat moved east.