Day: June 30, 2024

The outcome of the two-round election, which will wrap up July 7, could impact European financial markets, Western support for Ukraine and how France’s nuclear arsenal and global military force are managed.

Many French voters are frustrated about inflation and economic concerns, as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership, which they see as arrogant and out-of-touch with their lives. Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally party has tapped and fueled that discontent, notably via online platforms like TikTok, and dominated all preelection opinion polls.

A new coalition on the left, the New Popular Front, is also posing a challenge to the pro-business Macron and his centrist alliance Together for the Republic.

After a blitz campaign marred by rising hate speech, voting began early in France’s overseas territories, and polling stations open in mainland France at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) Sunday. The first polling projections are expected at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), when the final polling stations close, and early official results are expected later Sunday night.

Macron called the early election after his party was trounced in the European Parliament election earlier in June by the National Rally, which has historic ties to racism and antisemitism and is hostile toward France’s Muslim community. It was an audacious gamble that French voters who were complacent about the European Union election would be jolted into turning out for moderate forces in a national election to keep the far right out of power.

Instead, preelection polls suggest that the National Rally is gaining support and has a chance at winning a parliamentary majority. In that scenario, Macron would be expected to name 28-year-old National Rally President Jordan Bardella as prime minister in an awkward power-sharing system known as “cohabitation.”

While Macron has said he won’t step down before his presidential term expires in 2027, cohabitation would weaken him at home and on the world stage.

The results of the first round will give a picture of overall voter sentiment, but not necessarily of the overall makeup of the next National Assembly. Predictions are extremely difficult because of the complicated voting system, and because parties will work between the two rounds to make alliances in some constituencies or pull out of others.

In the past such tactical maneuvers helped keep far-right candidates from power. But now support for Le Pen’s party has spread deep and wide.

Bardella, who has no governing experience, says he would use the powers of prime minister to stop Macron from continuing to supply long-range weapons to Ukraine for the war with Russia. His party has historical ties to Russia.

The party has also questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France, and wants to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality. Critics say this undermines fundamental human rights and is a threat to France’s democratic ideals.

Meanwhile, huge public spending promises by the National Rally and especially the left-wing coalition have shaken markets and ignited worries about France’s heavy debt, already criticized by EU watchdogs.

On that sweltering June day, the business administration student collapsed in the street and strangers rushed him to the nearby Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital, one of the country’s largest.

When he was admitted, his body temperature had soared to more than 41 degrees Celsius and he was very dehydrated, said Seema Wasnik, head of RML’s emergency medicine department.

She immediately recognized the classic signs of heatstroke. More than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases were recorded in India as a prolonged heat wave pushed temperatures above 40 C on most days since May, with some areas hitting peaks of nearly 50 C.

The young Nigerian was lucky. The RML hospital is equipped with one of India’s first specialist heatstroke units, and doctors immersed him in an ice bath for 20 minutes to lower his temperature before moving him onto a ventilator.

His case was startling but not unusual – more than 30 patients have been treated in the unit since it opened in early May and five of those have died.

Heatstroke is caused when the body’s core temperature goes above 40.6 C. It can lead to long-term organ damage and death, and symptoms include rapid breathing, confusion or seizures, and nausea.

The specialist unit at the RML hospital is equipped with ceramic bathtubs where patients can be cooled, along with ventilators and huge ice machines. Wasnik said the hospital’s director decided to open the unit after seeing that meteorologists were predicting an extremely hot summer.

“We hoped that once we set the precedent other (hospitals) would follow,” she said.

And they did, spurred to action also by health ministry instructions to prepare for the prolonged and deadly heat waves being forecast by weather experts.

As well as Delhi’s RML hospital, a heatstroke unit was also opened in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Bhubaneswar in Odisha state. These are the leading national hospitals in the country.

Across India several other hospitals reserved beds and laid on extra staff to deal with heatstroke patients.

“The attention now being given to the problem signals a commitment to act,” said Srinath Reddy, an honorary distinguished professor associated with the Public Health Foundation of India, a health policy think tank.

“There is now no scope for apathy and no excuse for inertia as the climate emergency is scorching its signature on human bodies,” he said.

‘Heat trap’ cities

Across Asia, billions of people were exposed this summer to deadly temperatures for days on end with scientists attributing the intensity and duration of these heat waves to human-driven climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

So far this summer, from March to June, at least 110 people have died from heat-related illnesses in India, including scores of election workers during the recent vote. Northwest and eastern India recorded more than twice the usual number of heat wave days.

Hot winds during the day and relentlessly high temperatures at night meant there was no relief, and the agony was intensified for millions of the country’s poorest citizens by water shortages and power cuts.

Authorities described cities as “heat traps.”

And even as scattered rains began in late June, heralding the beginning of the monsoon season, Reddy said public pressure for more action to mitigate the effects of future heat waves would grow.

“There is now an anxious public’s demand for an effective government response and acceptance by pressured policymakers of the need to act with alacrity for protecting lives,” said Reddy.

Doctors from RML and AIIMS, Bhubaneswar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that more than 90% of the patients they treated for heat-related conditions were outdoor workers, including security guards, migrant laborers and street vendors.

“Extreme heat aggravates existing income and health inequities,” said Hisham Mundol, chief adviser at the Environmental Defense Fund, India.

The poorest were unable to adjust their lifestyles to seek shelter from the heat by, for example, taking time off work, and also could not afford air conditioning, Mundol said.

They were also more likely to seek help at crowded public hospitals, where services were under immense strain because of the number of heat-related cases.

The extent of the problem was revealed in a nationwide survey of over 12,000 people across 20 states and union territories by the Centre for Rapid Insights (CRI), which showed that 45% of the households surveyed said at least one person fell ill from the heat in May.

Of those affected, more than 67% had family members who were sick for more than five days, and the poorest people were hit particularly hard, the survey showed.

Dillip Kumar Parida, medical superintendent at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, said his institute had also opened a critical care unit for heatstroke patients but more needed to be done to keep pace with the effects of runaway global warming.

“The health system will have to prepare for that and stay ready so we are not caught by surprise like we were during COVID,” he said.

“Fighting with Mother Nature is impossible; we can only predict, prepare and spread awareness to deal with what is to come in the future,” he said.