In France, Nothing Gets in the Way of Vacation

Home | Community | Message Board

You are not signed in.
New Account

Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery

This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.

Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Isolated Cubensis Liquid Culture For Sale

Jump to first unread post

Pages: 1 | 2 | Next > [ show all ]

wingnutx

Registered: 09/24/00
Posts: 2,287

In France, Nothing Gets in the Way of Vacation

#1844853 - 08/24/03 02:14 AM (23 years, 9 days ago)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/weekin...;partner=GOOGLE

August 24, 2003

In France, Nothing Gets in the Way of Vacation

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

PARIS ? Don't get sick in Paris in August.

Not only do hospitals cut back capacity, as nurses and doctors depart for the sacrosanct August vacation. Stores close, restaurants close, even the city's ice cream parlors drop their shutters during the hottest month of the year so that employees won't miss their month-long summer holiday.

Apparently, nothing gets in the way of the holiday, not even grandma and grandpa. This summer's withering heat wave claimed a staggering number of victims ? the government talks of perhaps 5,000 deaths, the country's largest undertaker twice that number ? most of whom were elderly. The police, undertakers and social service agencies found them in apartments, homes and hotels. The rooms were often as hot as ovens.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, noted last week that roughly half the victims died in their homes, not in hospitals or nursing homes, implying that French families, in a rush to get to the beach, had simply left their loved ones to perish in the inferno. (And indeed, some families postponed funerals until after the Aug. 15 holiday weekend.)

The summer heat wave has exposed not only France's slavish devotion to August vacation, but also the breakdown of family ties. French society, experts say, now increasingly turns its back on the elderly.

"They are isolated," said Michel Chegaray, the secretary general of the Little Brothers of the Poor, a volunteer organization that assists the aged. "The family leaves, the corner store closes, they often live in the inexpensive top floors, where it is hottest."

One woman with severe respiratory problems, living in Paris's 13th Arrondissement, was sent home by an overcrowded and understaffed hospital, and died in her apartment. Another Parisian reported watching his mother die in a hospital where he alone was present to care for her. The rooms were not air-conditioned, he complained to a local paper, and much of the staff was on vacation. After the mother's death, it was hard to find hospital employees to make arrangements for the body and fill out the necessary paperwork.

"There is a sort of indifference to the problem of old age," said Dr. Fran?oise Forette, the director of Broca Hospital, which specializes in clinical geriatrics, in Paris. "Indifference in the face of a revolution in longevity."

Like most Western societies, France is experiencing an explosion in the number of elderly as life expectancy continues to lengthen. Traditionally, the French relied on tight-knit families to care for the aged, and to a degree that remains true. Indeed, government policy emphasizes efforts to keep the elderly in their own homes, providing money for day nurses and housekeepers to care for them, rather than committing the aged to retirement or nursing homes. Hence fewer than 15 percent of all French people above 80 are in some form of institution. Comparable figures for the United States are hard to come by, but the figure there is probably closer to 20 percent.

But French families are changing.

"Women were traditionally the pivot of assistance to the elderly," Dr. Forette said. Yet women are now work outside the home in ever increasing numbers. Moreover, mobility has invaded French society, once rigorously stable. While sons and daughters live and work in Bordeaux or Marseille, their elderly parents stay behind in Paris. Similarly, in rural families, aged parents remain in the countryside while their children gravitate to the big cities in search of jobs.

The French have been casting a glance at their southern neighbors, Spain and Italy, where temperatures during the heat wave exceeded those in France, yet the number of reported deaths was lower. Maybe these countries were better prepared to cope with heat because their summers are routinely hotter. Moreover, traditional family ties supposedly remain stronger there.

Yet differing reporting methods may also account for the difference. In Italy, for instance, heat can be taken as the cause of death only when the victim has no other known disabilities, which is rarely the case with the elderly. Moreover, the breakdown of family ties has not escaped France's Mediterranean neighbors.

The Italian media were full of reports this month about Maria Di Dio, 82, a widow from Caltanissetta, Sicily, and mother of 12 grown children. The police detained her son Salvatore after he deposited his mother on the doorstep of his brother Leonardo in 105 degree heat, before departing for his August holiday. Salvatore argued that it had been Leonardo's turn to care for their mother, even though he admitted knowing that Leonardo had already gone on vacation.

Quote:

left their loved ones to perish in the inferno

Heh, some inferno. I go jogging in that weather.

Extras: Top

Xlea321
Stranger

Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134

Re: In France, Nothing Gets in the Way of Vacation

[Re: wingnutx]
#1844930 - 08/24/03 04:17 AM (23 years, 9 days ago)

Heh, some inferno. I go jogging in that weather.

That's kinda the point isn't it? If you live in a country not used to hot weather it's going to have more of an effect. Seems simple enough.

--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

Extras:

Similar Threads	Poster	Views	Replies	Last post
DID AMERICA CAUSE THE TSUNAMI??????? ( 1 2 3 all )	Baby_Hitler	4,422	53	01/17/05 10:57 AM by CJay
Iraq may be on the edge but France has hit rock bottom abyss ( 1 2 3 4 all )	wingnutx	6,287	69	08/25/03 12:37 PM by Anonymous
Fuck France! ( 1 2 3 all )	Lana	4,021	45	03/19/03 05:22 PM by Evolving
40-60 cars still burnt by Muslims each night in France .	lonestar2004	751	7	12/09/05 06:36 PM by Los_Pepes
I'm pretty sure that France is fucking retarded ( 1 2 3 all )	afoaf	7,295	53	04/11/06 11:54 AM by afoaf
French Government Seeks Answers to Why So Many Died in Heat	wingnutx	482	1	08/26/03 12:54 PM by wingnutx
France Expels Muslims	Ed1	2,208	12	09/12/04 05:35 AM by hound
Douce France	lonestar2004	578	1	10/30/05 08:44 PM by Los_Pepes