People across Europe continued to suffer under a sizzling heat wave on Tuesday, with no end in sight to temperatures well above 30 C.

In France, where at least 23 people have died as a result of the heat, officials scrambled to deal with a strike by doctors at private health clinics.

The concern was that services at public hospitals could be overwhelmed by the labour disputeinvolving surgeons, obstetricians and anesthesiologists which began on Monday.

About half of the country was put under an orange alert, France's second-highest warning level.

Officials were also keeping a close eye on the elderly.A 2003 heat wave killed at least 15,000 people, many of them old and infirm.

Still, deaths were reported, including a 90-year-old woman who was found dead on Sunday in the Paris suburb of Orly. The woman's body temperature was 41 C, officials said.

Drink plenty of water,officials urge

Meanwhile, in Germany, officials were also expressing concerns about the elderly, urging them to drink two litres of water a day to help deal with the high temperatures.

In Poland, the country's agriculture minister said this year's harvest could be reduced by as much as 20 per cent because of the heat, the BBC reported.

And in England, the CBC's Heather Hiscox reported that the warmer climate in the south of the country has people "referring to London and Britain as going Mediterranean."

"We've got about a week of this left," CBC meteorologist Claire Martin told CBC.ca.

The heat across Europe is intense right now, Martin said, but the temperatures will eventually break.

"Mother Nature can't tolerate an imbalance for too long. The shift will be small in one area and will eventually cascade through," she said.