PARIS, Aug. 18—The withering temperatures of the last several weeks in France claimed its first political victim today, after health experts blamed the heat for as many as 5,000 deaths.
The director general for health, Dr. Lucien Abenhaïm, whose office is roughly equivalent to that of a surgeon general, handed in his resignation, which the government accepted.
He said that "given the present controversies surrounding the handling of the epidemic connected with the heat wave," he preferred to quit.
Dr. Abenhaïm, an accomplished epidemiologist, stepped down even though he later argued, in a radio interview, that "for the moment, it has not been demonstrated that errors were made."
While temperatures have fallen considerably in recent days and a light cooling rain swept Paris in the early morning hours today, thermometers have hovered over 100 degrees in many parts of France since mid-July.
Health experts said the stress caused by such heat, coupled with the general unpreparedness of the health system, could have caused as many as 5,000 deaths.
The health minister, Dr. Jean-François Mattei, in an interview with French radio, called the number 5,000 "plausible," though he said it was "only a hypothesis."
The heat is being blamed for hundreds of other deaths across Europe, but by far the highest number of victims have been recorded in France, where temperatures peaked at about 105 degrees in some places.
The problem was aggravated in France by the widespread custom of leaving elderly relatives behind while families go on vacation and by the practice of closing parts of hospitals while doctors and other staff take month-long August breaks.
But the growing number of victims has set off a political storm.
Last week Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin cut short his own August vacation to declare a state of emergency. This enabled the government to call back public employees, to open military hospitals to patients in need, and to establish emergency morgues to handle a backlog of bodies unable to be buried.
But opposition leaders pounded Mr. Raffarin and his health minister, Dr. Mattei, saying the measures were too little and too late.
Mr. Raffarin came under fire in the spring because of his efforts to overhaul the laws governing several key areas of French public service, including the health care and school system and the generous pension regime for public employees.
Waves of strikes paralyzed major French cities. The present crisis threatens to extend the opposition to the government's programs, which are driven by the need to scale back government spending in the face of a sluggish economy, into the autumn.
The opposition Socialist Party, which has been in disarray since its candidates were soundly defeated in last year's general elections, has seized on the deaths to try to regain cohesion and mount an offensive against the government.
Its spokesman, Julien Dray, said Dr. Abenhaïm's resignation "must not mask the necessary search for the truth in this drama, so that all the necessary consequences may be drawn, allowing decisions to be made so that it is not repeated."
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