Most of the time, health consequences of heat waves are serious. Heat wave response plans were developed for reducing health effects but even if they are very efficient it is not possible to eliminate all health consequences. It is therefore necessary to develop a flexible health surveillance system capable of rapidly identifying the population health burden of elevated temperature. This study focused on the Year 2006 summer heat wave, which resulted in 2,000 deaths in a 2 week period. This study represents the first opportunity to test the capabilities of a syndromic surveillance system to provide pertinent information and define appropriate indicators.
Objective
The objective of the study is to evaluate the value of a syndromic surveillance system during a heat wave and propose pertinent indicators.