FRANCE: After killing an estimated 5,000 people, the heat wave in France claimed its first political victim yesterday when Dr Lucien Abenhaïm, the director general of health - the equivalent of a surgeon-general - resigned, writes Lara Marlowe Paris
Hours earlier, the health minister, Dr Jean-François Mattei, admitted that estimates of 5,000 dead in the two-week long heat wave were realistic.
A day earlier, Dr Mattei insisted the number of dead was between 1,600 and 3,000. "A figure of 5,000 has been circulating . . . It's plausible, but it's only a hypothesis," he acknowledged on RTL radio station.
Dr Mattei blamed two departments within his own ministry: Dr Abenhaïm's directorate and the National Institute for the Observation of Health.
"We did not have the information and alarm signals that we should have had," Dr Mattei said, "and when you're not informed, you cannot act in time." The head of the institute, Mr Gilles Brucker, has admitted "a share of responsibility" and may also resign.
The health minister mentioned a specific error by Dr Abenhaïm.
"I understood how serious the situation was on Monday evening when on the one hand I received a message from the Directorate General of Health saying the situation was under control and on the other hand, hospital emergency rooms and the head of the public health system were telling me the situation was truly untenable."
On August 10th, when the head of the emergency room doctors' association announced that 50 people had died in Paris, Dr Abenhaïm disputed the figure and said that "difficulties are comparable to those of previous years, barring exceptional cases".
At the height of the epidemic of heat-related deaths, on August 12th, 250 people died in Paris alone.
Dr Abenhaïm said he was resigning because "shameful polemics over a public health tragedy" prevented him "from explaining serenely the conditions in which this catastrophe occurred".
He claimed his department had raised the alarm on August 8th, the date it issued a press statement about preventive measures during the heat wave.
The more strongly worded warning by emergency room doctors two days later "did not prevent the apogee of the epidemic and thousands of deaths," Dr Abenhaïm added, "so obviously this question of whether the catastrophe could have been avoided if the alarm had been raised a day earlier is completely irrelevant."
The left-wing opposition said that Dr Abenhaïm, though partly responsible, served as a scapegoat for government ineptitude.
"Yet again, they're making the underlings pay," said Mr Yves Contassot, the spokesman for the Green Party. "The man who is truly responsible for public health policy in France [the minister] is saying, 'I'm neither at fault nor responsible'."
Although temperatures have fallen, the government is maintaining the health alert out of fears the heat wave could recur.