HEALTH and weather experts have encouraged people to act sensibly as a heat wave is about to hit WA.
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The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has forecasted temperatures approaching 40 degrees throughout next week.
"It's been cased by a high-pressure system off the coast, south-east of the state," BOM spokesperson Megan Cash said.
"Once we go into next week, we will see warmer temperatures around the 35 to 40 degrees mark. Temperatures in Mandurah will be a little cooler than in Perth thanks to the coast, but they will still be very high."
During a press conference on Thursday, WA Health deputy chief Dr Andrew Robertson warned of the potential dangers caused by heat waves.
"We will be working with other government agencies as part of that event to try and reduce and prevent any side-effects of the heatwave," Dr Robertson said.
"There are obviously a lot of things we can do help prevent people getting unwell during this period; working with government agencies and other agencies to reduce people working outside, encouraging people not to exercise during the middle of the day [and] encouraging people to look after their young children and the elderly who may be impacted by these kind of events."
Dr Robertson said the effects of heat exhaustion and heatstroke may only be noticed by sufferers by the time they are seriously ill.
"There are acute effects from a heatwave, so people may, if they are exposed, end up in hospital with heat exhaustion or heatstroke, and we will see some of those in the first few days," he said.
"But as the days go on and we sort of get to two, three, four days of very high temperatures – and particularly higher mean temperatures – people will get exhausted. If you already have a chronic disease problem, and you’re now exhausted because you haven’t been sleeping, this can exacerbate their chronic disease issues."
Dr Robertson urged anyone who is feeling particularly unwell to present to hospital.
"If people are feeling unwell, we do encourage people to go to hospital and not to wait," he said.
"During this period, it’s really about people acting in a sensible way. There’s nothing that complicated: it’s about staying cool, drinking plenty of fluids and not wearing warm clothing.
"We try to encourage people to not exercise during the middle of the day, unfortunately we do have people dying from exercising, so if you need to exercise, do it early in the morning or when the temperature drops at night."
