PARIS, Aug 31: Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has decided to ask the US government to send to France some of America’s leading specialists on heat waves, among them Michael McGeehin, director of the environmental effects division of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.

French health officials are reportedly more interested in coming up with a professional explanation of what happened, a situation that saw the number of heat-related deaths in France reach a level more than ten times greater that in the other countries.

Already, Mr McGeehin has been attempting to provide the French government with arguments that might persuade them that the large number of deaths is not entirely explainable by governmental unpreparedness. Reached by telephone, he noted for example that “it’s very difficult to attribute death directly to the phenomenon of heat, because victims happen to die too from cardiovascular problems.”