Heat wave victims overrun hospitals
Print Edition
Hospitals in India battled yesterday to treat victims of a blistering heat wave that has claimed nearly 1,500 lives in just over a week — the highest number recorded in two decades.
Hundreds of mainly poor people die at the height of summer every year in India, but this year’s figures are already the highest since 1995, when official data shows 1,677 people succumbed to the heat.
In southern Andhra Pradesh, by far the worst-hit state where top temperatures have reached 47 degrees Celsius and 1,020 people have died since May 18, doctors said they had never seen so many severe cases.
“Our wards are completely full,” said J V Subbarao, medical officer at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Medical Sciences in Andhra Pradesh.
“I have worked as a medical officer in this district for 40 years and I have never seen anything like this, with so many people arriving already dead.”
Subbarao said that most of the worst affected were poor and elderly people who were simply unaware of the dangers of heat stroke, which can be fatal if left untreated.
Another 340 people have died from the heat in neighboring Telangana state, where temperatures hit 48 degrees Celsius over the weekend, compared to 31 such deaths in the whole of last year.
Experts say official figures for heat-related deaths likely underestimate the true number because extreme weather conditions disproportionately affect the poor who are less likely to die in hospitals.
The Center for Science and Environment, a New Delhi research group, said the high number of deaths could be due to the sudden onset of the heat.
“This could be due to the sudden change in temperatures after a prolonged wet February and March that had kept the temperatures cool,” said Arjuna Srinidhi, the group’s programme manager for climate change.
Hospitals in Delhi, where top temperatures have soared to 45 degrees Celsius, were struggling to cope with the fall-out.
Heavy use of air conditioners also led to power cuts in parts of Delhi.
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