On 6 June 2024, the Crash team will be delighted to welcome Lana Whittaker, Kévin Jean and Aina Roca Barceló for a conference on heatwaves, co-organized with MSF France’s Green Team.
Venue: MSF headquarters, 34 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris.
Broadcast: The conference can be viewed in streaming on this page and in French here.
Inscription : Registration is only required for people outside of MSF and who wish to attend the conference in person, here.
Heat waves are among the most visible manifestations of climate change. According to the scientific network World Weather Attribution, the extreme temperatures recorded since last March in the Sahel, the Middle East and Asia (Thailand and the Philippines in particular) would not have been possible in the pre-industrial era. As the atmosphere warms, heat waves are becoming more frequent and more intense. They represent a major public health problem, of which we became aware in France in 2003. At that time, 15,000 people died as a result of the heatwave – half from pathologies directly linked to the heat, the other half from the decompensation of chronic illnesses. Since then, the adoption of individual, collective and structural measures within the framework of the “Heatwave Plan” has enabled us to drastically reduce the excess mortality linked to these phenomena.
What is the situation in the various regions of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America where MSF operates? What is the frequency and intensity of heat waves? Is their impact on health comparable to that observed in wealthy countries with continental or temperate climates? What responses have populations and authorities deployed? Who are the most vulnerable groups? And how is MSF approaching this new phenomenon at operational level?
