"Criminal canicula", 47,000 victims in a single year

Heatwave kills people, that's the reality. No matter how many measures are taken, there are casualties, but there is also a development of adaptive capacity. A team of scientists estimates that more than 47,000 people will die in Europe in 2023 due to high temperatures and at the same time notes an increase in people's tolerance to heat, according to an estimated study based on computer models by Barcelona Institute for Global Health and published in the journal Nature Medicine. The international group of researchers, which used Eurostat data, also came to the conclusion that society seems to be adapting to the heat. They started by analyzing data from 96 million deaths to estimate heat-related mortality in 2023 for 823 regions and 35 European countries. According to these estimates, there were 47,690 heat-related deaths in Europe last year. This is the second highest mortality since such estimates began in 2015. The highest mortality was estimated for the year 2022. The researchers showed that the countries with the highest level of heat-related mortality are in southern Europe - Greece (393 deaths per 1 million inhabitants), Bulgaria (229), Italy (209) and Spain (175) occupy the top four places in this estimate. For comparison, this rate in Germany was estimated at 76 deaths per 1 million inhabitants in 2023. recent summers, especially among the elderly," said Elisa Gallo, Barcelona team coordinator. She stated that the minimum mortality temperature - the optimal temperature at which the least risk of mortality is manifested - has gradually increased on average across the continent since 2000, from 15 degrees Celsius between 2000 and 2004, to 17.7 degrees Celsius between 2015 and 2019. "This shows that we are less vulnerable to heat than we were at the beginning of the century, probably as a result of general socio-economic progress, improvements in individual behaviors and public health measures such as prevention plans of heat implemented after the record summer of 2003," Gallo added. Specialists are also carefully watching the data from 2024, a year that broke the record for hot days.