Hospitals scramble for ice and air before heat returns

hospitals scramble – At Paris-Saclay Hospital, medics turned to a fast-food restaurant’s ice and supermarket buys to cool patients during a record-shattering heat wave. The episode is now pushing hospitals across France to accelerate upgrades, including new ice-making capacity, co

ORSAY, France — The ice came in fast, urgent quantities after emergency medics at a Paris-region hospital hit a problem that should not have existed during a health crisis: there was no ice-making machine.

As temperatures climbed and patients arrived with dangerous heat exposure, staff needed cold-water baths to bring temperatures down quickly. Without a reliable supply, they had to scramble for it.

A fast-food restaurant helped last week by offering ice so the hospital could take it. Staff also bought ice from a supermarket. Paris-Saclay Hospital has since ordered its own ice machine. an emergency-department upgrade they’re waiting to receive in case the next surge of sizzling weather strikes again.

Whether it comes as soon as next week — France’s weather service said it might — or later in the summer. administrators and medics are treating the lesson as something bigger than a single bad week. They describe heat-wave response the way hospitals talk about recurring seasons: prepared, then forced to relearn on the fly.

“ We thought we were ready. We were not actually,” said Cédric Lussiez, director of the public hospital.

He said the hospital operated on a 24-hours-a-day basis because staff had to find new solutions “in a very short delay.” He also said “We already learned some lessons.”

Across Europe. officials are moving to close gaps exposed by last week’s heat. which shifted eastward after battering France. the United Kingdom and other countries. In France. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced a 100-million euro ($114-million) spend starting this summer for cooling systems for hospitals and other work meant to keep wards functioning.

At the latest in a series of heat-wave crisis meetings, Lecornu said Monday that the government is buying 30,000 air-conditioning units for health facilities. The first deliveries are expected “at the end of the week, beginning of next week.”

“It’s an absolute priority for us that, if the heat wave returns, the hospital situation be a lot less strained,” he said.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday the heat wave is “a dress rehearsal” for summers that “will be harder.” It added that “Europe is warming at more than twice the global average. ” and warned that heat waves “are no longer one-off freak events.” The WHO said every summer in which preparations fall short is a summer “we pay for in lives.”.

At Paris-Saclay Hospital, the danger arrived fast. Dr. Nicolas Gonzales, head of the emergency department, said patients suffering from heat exposure started arriving in a surge on June 20.

“It was like a big mountain,” he said. “It was like that for seven days. So it was very intense.”

Gonzales compared the pattern hospitals already know — influenza in winter — to what is now becoming a summer emergency. “In winter, we know we’ll have influenza epidemics and probably COVID as well. And now, in the summer, we’re going to have the climate crisis,” he said.

The first patient he treated in this heat wave was an emergency call-out: a 50-year-old man in a coma at home with a temperature of about 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). Gonzales said the man’s family told hospital staff he seemed fine one minute, then became unconscious the next. He was rushed for critical care.

Then the pace accelerated into a flood of cases, including heart attacks, dehydration, kidney malfunctions and other heat-related problems. Gonzales said the effects touched all age groups, from children to older people living alone.

“Heat is a physical assault. It is a physical assault on the body,” he said. “And when the body can no longer adapt — or, unfortunately, is no longer able to fight off that assault — you don’t feel it coming, and the heart can stop beating.”

Even hospitals with newer infrastructure were pushed to the edge. Paris-Saclay Hospital is new and has air-conditioning. but three older hospitals in its group — which Lussiez heads — were less protected against the heat. During the heat wave, the hospital had to test them “arduously,” using temporary workarounds to keep medications from spoiling.

They cooled medicines with electric fans and blocks of ice, while student nurses were recruited to help with hydration. Lussiez said the thermometer reached 33 C (91 F) on the top, most exposed floor of a psychiatric unit.

Now, the urgent task is turning those makeshift solutions into lasting defenses. Lussiez said the hospital is equipping that psychiatric unit with a cool room for patients on each floor and organizing other renovation works and changes. That includes moving a department for elderly patients to the new hospital.

“We’ll be in a better situation next week than we were last week,” he said.

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