Recent extreme weather events have caused serious health and social problems across Europe. During the summer heat waves of 2003 across Europe, France recorded an excess of over 14,000 deaths contributed to heat-related causes. Other countries such as Italy and Portugal experienced over 3,000 and over 2,000 excess deaths respectively. The extreme rises in mortality were initially unobserved by traditional public health surveillance techniques; morbidity related to heat-related exposures also went initially unnoticed by public health authorities.
Real-time monitoring of clinical data has been proposed as one method of surveillance that may be used to alert public health authorities during extreme weather conditions when heat-related morbidity may be higher than expected. Previous studies have shown increased ambulance calls during heat alert conditions in Canada. These potential data sources, including electronic medical records for emergency department visits, are already in existence in many of the countires affected by the heat waves of 2003. Syndromic surveillance methods such as those described by Mandl et al could be applied to these data to help detect when heat-related morbidity and possibly heat-related mortality begins to rise.
Objective
The specific objectives of the study are to evaluate the usefulness of syndromic surveillance data to monitor heat-related morbidity and mortality during extreme weather conditions. During such conditions, real time data monitoring could potentially help drive interventions to reduce morbidity and mortality.