Heatwave health responses in Belgium and the Netherlands: a study

A press release datelined Brussels, 22 November 2016, and listed on 25 November, presented a study by researchers from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL). Dr Joris van Loenhout was named as lead author. The paper appeared in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and belonged to the ENHANCE case study on heat and health in European cities.

The team examined the national heatwave plans of Belgium and the Netherlands. They interviewed people who had helped draft the plans and people who were expected to apply them in Brussels and Amsterdam.

The main finding concerned care organisations. Elderly-care homes and hospitals are named in the plans, yet their representatives were often unaware of them and gave heat a low priority. Some groups at risk, among them people with little social contact and the homeless, were not covered well enough. Implementation at local level was also thin, and the roles set out in the plans are voluntary rather than legally enforced.

The release gave the background in one figure: the European heatwave of 2003 caused up to 80,000 deaths and pushed many countries to adopt heat plans in the first place. The study asked whether those plans reached the people who would have to act on them on a hot day, and in the care sector the answer was often no.

Riikka Pohjankoski of ARCTIK SPRL, the project’s communication partner, handled media contact, and the release was issued in English, French and Dutch. Heat was one of the hazards in the ENHANCE portfolio listed in the project’s objectives, alongside floods, drought, forest fire, storm surge and volcanic eruption.