Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003
Jean-Marie Robine a,∗, Siu Lan K. Cheung a, Sophie Le Roy a, Herman Van Oyen b,
Clare Griffiths c, Jean-Pierre Michel d, François Richard Herrmann d
a INSERM, Démographie et santé, CRLC, centre Val-d’Aurelle, parc Euromédecine, 34298 Montpellier cedex 5, France
b Unit of Epidemiology, Scientific Institute of Public Health, J. Wytsmanstraat 14, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
c Office of National Statistics, Mortality Statistics, 1 Drummond Gate, London SW1V 2QQ, London, UK
d Department of Rehabilitation and Geriatrics, Geneva Medical School and University Hospitals, 3, ch. Pont-Bochet,
1226 Thonex-Genève, Switzerland
Received 22 August 2007; accepted after revision 2 December 2007
Available online 31 December 2007
Presented by Alain-Jacques Valleron
Abstract
Daily numbers of deaths at a regional level were collected in 16 European countries. Summer mortality was analyzed for the reference period 1998–2002 and for 2003. More than 70,000 additional deaths occurred in Europe during the summer 2003. Major distortions occurred in the age distribution of the deaths, but no harvesting effect was observed in the months following August 2003. Global warming constitutes a new health threat in an aged Europe that may be difficult to detect at the country level, depending on its size. Centralizing the count of daily deaths on an operational geographical scale constitutes a priority for Public Health in Europe. To cite this article: J.-M. Robine et al., C. R. Biologies 331 (2008).
© 2007 Académie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Human; Elderly; Daily mortality; Europe; Heat wave; Global warming
