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Very high temperatures exercise a significantly harmful effect on Quebec’s health-care system, a team of researchers from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique have concluded, a finding that becomes even more important as such events become more common in the context of climate change.
The researchers found that the impacts they measured were felt by the health-care system throughout the summer and not just during heat waves such as that being experienced this week in Quebec.
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Jérémie Boudreault, the study’s chief author, said researchers used five parameters to gauge the province-wide mortality and morbidity linked to hot weather: mortality, hospitalizations, visits to emergency rooms, ambulance transports and calls to the 811 Info-Santé information line.
Their research determined that each summer in Quebec, high temperatures are linked to:
- 470 deaths.
- 225 hospitalizations.
- 36,000 visits to ERs.
- 7,200 transports by ambulance.
- 15,000 calls to Info-Santé.
The most acute burden on the health system was concentrated during the five per cent of hottest days during the summer, where 200 deaths, 170 hospitalizations, 6,200 ER visits, 1,500 ambulance transports and 3,300 Info-Santé calls were recorded.
Boudreault said the effects of the heat were felt throughout the system.
“It’s important to have this information in the context of climate change,” he said. “To be able to ensure adequate (health care) staffing during prolonged periods of heat.”
Earlier studies conducted on the subject in Quebec did not measure the impact of heat waves lasting less than three days on the health-care system, even if statistics indicated such an impact did occur, said Boudreault, who is a candidate in the customized doctorate program on data science and environmental health at the INRS and who carried out his work under the supervision of professor Fateh Chebana.
Boudreault said the research sends a message to the Health Ministry and provincial government: “Here are the impacts we’re experiencing and here are the impacts for the future. I think it provides a solid argument to say that these are the measures to put in place to reduce a burden (on the health-care system) that is going to become bigger and bigger.”
The study’s conclusions have been published in the scientific magazine Environmental Research.
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