Chirac calls for solidarity after heatwave

President Jacques Chirac promised to correct failings in France’s health service today in his first public comments about a heat wave that his government said probably killed 10,000 people.

The French president, who had been under fire by the media and opposition MPs for remaining silent during the crisis, said it was tragic that many of the victims had “died alone in their homes”.

He said he had called on his government to produce an in-depth study of the crisis and its causes, and he promised proposals by October to better care for France’s growing number of pensioners.

“Everything will be done to correct the insufficiencies that we noted in our health system,” he said in an address after a Cabinet meeting on the heat that baked France for the first two weeks of August.

The minister for the elderly, Hubert Falco, said that “most probably” about 10,000 people had died.

He was the first minister to confirm estimates released a day earlier by France’s largest chain of undertakers that the heat wave, France’s longest and hottest ever with temperatures topping 40 C (104 F), was likely to have claimed 10,000 victims.

The crisis caused morgues and funeral homes to overflow with bodies, overwhelmed hospitals and prompted painful soul-searching about France’s attitude to the elderly.

“These dramas again shed light on the solitude of many of our aged or handicapped citizens,” said Chirac. “Aged and handicapped people should be able to count on the solidarity of the French.”

Some critics blamed families for abandoning their elderly relatives at home while they took their summer holidays.

Health workers blamed understaffing and underfunding at hospitals and retirement homes. Many accused the government of doing too little, too late.

In an apparent effort to calm the storm of criticism, Chirac said “today, the time is for contemplation, solidarity and action.”

He called the heat wave “exceptional”, echoing some government health officials who said little more could have been done to save lives in the face of such extreme weather.

That Chirac addressed the nation live on radio and TV was a measure of the gravity of the crisis faced by his centre-right government.

As president, he generally tends to stay above the fray of day-to-day domestic politics – an attitude critics had assailed considering the high death toll.

Chirac was on holiday in Canada during the heat wave and did not speak about the crisis in public, although aides said he was following events closely.

Some critics noted that unlike former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who broke off a holiday in Egypt when France suffered storms in 1999, Chirac did not return home.

“What wounded the French was the feeling that their leaders were not present on a moral, human and emotional level,” Socialist MP Jack Lang, a former education minister, said. “They simply ask: ‘Why were you so far away from us during this testing time?”’

One newspaper said 51% of 1,000 people asked regarded the government response as inadequate.

“Chirac: a long silence that surprises,” conservative-leaning Le Figaro newspaper said in a headline today.

“Chirac counts the dead,” said the left-leaning Liberation, over a cartoon of Chirac finger-pointing with the prime minister and the health minister.

Without giving a death toll, Chirac said the heat “caused a very large number of victims.”

He promised a review of France’s health surveillance, alert and prevention bodies “to avoid such dramas in the future”.

France’s medical system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. But some health workers said it fell short in August because of a law which has restricted France’s working week to 35 hours, which has led to staff shortages, and because hospital and retirement home workers were on holiday.

:: German authorities reported new fresh heat-related deaths today, bringing the number of victims there to 32.

Most of the victims were either in homes for the elderly or were patients in hospital. Despite the latest reports, a German undertakers’ association said today that this summer appeared to be “normal”.

:: Portugal’s Health Ministry said more than 1,300 had been killed by the heat there. In Spain the official toll is 100, but newspaper have reported that it is much higher.

:: Officials in the Netherlands said the heat had claimed the lives of 500 to 1,000 people there since June. They said that for every degree above normal summer temperatures, there had been 25 extra deaths a week.

“These were people who didn’t die because of the heat itself, but died faster than they would have ordinarily,” a spokesman said.