 Homepage > All about population > Teaching kits > Length of life / Death / Mortality > The August 2003 hotwave in FranceContenu The August 2003 hotwave in France The French mortality peak due to the August 2003 heatwave was exceptional in scale and surprisingly abrupt. It killed 15,000 people between 1 and 20 August.
What was the scale of excess mortality? The number of deaths recorded in July and August each year in metropolitan France (around 85,000) has remained relatively stable over the last thirty years. But in 2003, a mortality surge began on 4 August and lasted for over two weeks. It peaked on 11, 12 and 13 August, with a daily number of deaths two-and-a-half times above the normal average.  Ratio of number of deaths to expected number of deaths by department
The Paris region and central France were hardest hit The heatwave did not affect the whole of France equally. The Île-de-France and Centre regions were hardest hit, with a doubling of mortality in the first 20 days of August. On 12 August, the number of deaths in Île-de-France was six times higher than in previous years. In the Basse Normandie, Bretagne, Languedoc-Roussillon and Nord-Pas-de-Calais regions, however, excess mortality was no more than 25 %.  More deaths among the vulnerable The risk of dying from heat exposure is especially high for vulnerable individuals such as old people and small children. Though children were largely unaffected, probably because their parents kept a close watch on them, the over-75s represented 82% of all heatwave victims. In the overall population aged 75+, mortality increased by more than 90% with respect to the normal level, and for the over-95s the increase was 130%. Last update : January 25 2008 |
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