This text is part of the special issue Climate Issues section
A recent study by the Institut national de la recherche scientifique assessed the human cost of heat waves in Quebec and the burden they place on our health system. This topic is all the more important since these episodes are likely to become more and more intense and frequent.
Until now, studies on the impact of heat on health systems have generally been limited to observing the number of deaths and hospitalizations. The research led by a team from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), in collaboration with the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) and Health Canada, took a broader look at the issue. It analyzed the effect of heat on mortality and hospitalizations, but also on emergency room visits, ambulance rides and calls to the Info-Santé line.
“We had access to anonymized data on these factors through the INSPQ. They allowed us to establish statistical links with heat waves and extreme heat in the different health regions of Quebec,” explains Éric Lavigne, an epidemiologist at Health Canada and professor at the University of Ottawa. Northern Quebec, Nunavik and Terres-Cries-de-la-Baie-James were not included in the study.
Important consequences
The results show a considerable effect of heat on the health system for almost all of the factors studied. It would increase mortality, emergency room visits, ambulance trips and calls to the Info-Santé line by 2 to 3%. In concrete terms, this translates into 470 deaths, 36,000 emergency room visits, 7,200 ambulance trips and 15,000 calls to the Info-Santé line each summer. As for hospitalizations, heat causes a more modest increase of 0.1% during the summer period.
“These are quite significant increases, especially since we are basing our calculations on past data,” says Éric Lavigne. “If the average temperature continues to rise and heat waves become more frequent due to climate change, the burden on the health system will become even greater.”
To carry out their analyses, the researchers had access to data going back to 1996 for deaths and hospitalizations, to 2008 for calls to the Info-Santé line, but only to 2014 for emergency admissions and ambulance transports.
“These results help to better understand the impact of heat on the health system in different regions of Quebec, which can be used to better plan the response of health services during heat waves by, for example, providing more staff in certain locations,” explains Fateh Chebana, an INRS researcher specializing in data sciences applied to the environment and environmental health.
Before conducting this study, INRS and INSPQ had already worked on developing an alert system to locally predict heat waves and the possible impacts on mortality. Together, the two tools increase understanding of the effects of these episodes on health systems and the ability to prepare for them.
A financial burden
Fateh Chebana adds that the team of researchers is currently working on a second phase of the project which aims to assess the financial costs of the effects of heat on the health system. These assessments will be based on different scenarios, pessimistic or optimistic, regarding the possible evolutions of climate change.
“This study could provide additional arguments to convince the government and the population of the price we will have to pay if we do not take certain actions to better react during heat waves or to create conditions that reduce their impacts,” says the INRS researcher.
Levels of government could address heat islands and pollution, which are known to amplify the negative impacts of heat on human health, he cites as examples. Individuals, for their part, should stop taking these episodes lightly and follow public health advice, such as staying hydrated, reducing physical activity, going to air-conditioned places and checking on elderly or vulnerable loved ones.
For his part, Éric Lavigne hopes that this demonstration of the financial costs of heat will lead the population to understand that the balance of the health care bill will climb at the same time as the mercury. “It’s an additional awareness tool, to invite people to be concerned about climate change,” he maintains.
This content was produced by the Special Publications Team of Dutyrelevant to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part in it.