Drownings: More than 100 people have died in France in one month, a “very sharp increase” attributed to the recent heatwave

More than 100 people have already died by drowning in France between the beginning of June and the beginning of July, a jump of half compared to the same period in 2024 , the French Public Health Agency (SPF) noted on Friday, July 11.

The agency noted that between June ¹ and July 2, 109 people died by drowning. "We are making the connection with the heatwave we have just experienced," Aymeric Bun Ung, an epidemiologist for the public health agency, said at a press conference.

This is 58% more than in the same period last year. The trend is even more pronounced when considering all drownings, including those that were not fatal: reaching more than 400, they have doubled in one year.

While the public health agency does not detail specific situations, recent news has provided several dramatic examples: two teenagers drowned in a wild area of ​​the Loire in mid-June, near Saint-Etienne, while a 24-year-old woman died a few days later in a river in Deux-Sèvres, on the fringes of the Fête de la Musique.

In fact, young people are particularly affected, with a particular surge in fatal drownings among minors: 19 have already been recorded, whereas a year earlier, fewer than ten were counted. In a few cases, children have drowned in private swimming pools, but most often, these deaths involve adolescents (over 13 years old) who were swimming in yards or bodies of water. In contrast, adult drownings occur just as frequently at sea.

For the public health agency, the cause is clear: the second half of June was marked by a heatwave of a magnitude almost never seen at this time , prolonged by a strong heatwave at the very beginning of July. Almost the entire metropolis was affected. "We know that these high temperatures accentuate the dangers associated with swimming," insisted Mr. Bun Ung, for whom "the danger of drowning is very real (...) in unsupervised waterways and bodies of water," in "these conditions [leading] an influx of people to bathing sites to cool off."

Drownings therefore indirectly add to the range of health problems exacerbated by extreme heat, which is becoming increasingly common in a context of global warming. Regardless of the age group concerned, the surge in drownings is all the more worrying given that the school holiday period, which is conducive to these accidents, had not even begun for most of the period studied.