WHY SO MANY DEATHS OF ELDERLY PERSONS

FOLLOWING EXTRAORDINARY HOT WEATHER IN ITALY? (August 2003)

By Renato Cocchi, Md

Too many elderly persons died in August 2003 in Italy and in other European countries (about 15.000 deaths only in France!), following extraordinary summer hot weather. Of course they were the more fragile persons.

This hot weather is a big stressor and we cannot act on it.

But we can fight its effects by avoiding the hot temperature acts on elderly persons by using environmental means, if we can do it (eg. conditionated air, or holiday in tepid places, or loneliness reduction, assistance increased. or any other one decreasing a share of stress or reactions to stress, as pointed up in guidelines of the home page of this site). We can "protect" every elderly person by giving them an electronic device that call telephonic help by pressing one only button.

We can also act on individual resistance to stress by antistress drugs, but physicians do not know that they can do and how to do it, because not more intellectually interested in it since many decades.

Italian translation

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