India Heat related fatalities 2015 - 2,500+ deaths

[Ronan Kelly]

Odisha
Heat Wave Relents, Sunstroke Toll 30
By Express News Service Published: 05th June 2015 06:00 AM Last Updated: 05th June 2015 04:49 AM

BHUBANESWAR: Though heat wave condition eased out across Odisha, Bhubaneswar, which recorded 40.3 degree Celsius, remained the hottest city in the State on Thursday. Meanwhile, the toll due to sunstroke climbed to 30 in the State.
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The State Special Relief Commissioner?s (SRC) office confirmed the death of 30 people due to sunstroke across Odisha. The Revenue Department received reports of 146 deaths of which 50 cases were found to be due to some other reasons and 66 cases were under investigation by the district Collectors.
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http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Heat-Wave-Relents-Sunstroke-Toll-30/2015/06/05/article2850349.ece

[Ronan Kelly]

Updated: June 7, 2015 09:01 IST
Summer of 2015

JAYANT SRIRAM

There has been an unprecendented number of deaths from the heat wave that swept Andhra Pradesh and Telangana this May. Why have the two governments been caught on the back foot?

On May 29, Putti Balamani, 44, a resident of Ramnarayanpet in Telangana, went to work after seven days of leave. A farm worker for 15 years now, along with her husband, Putti Ramulu, Balamani had asked for leave a week ago after temperatures in the region became unusually high, touching 48 degrees on a couple of days. On the 29th, though, her employer insisted she come to work ? a new borewell was being sunk that day to provide additional water to the fields and it would be better, he said, if some women were present for the puja before the drilling started.

Balamani, her husband says, went for the puja at about 10 a.m., walking roughly 4 kilometres from home, and came back at about 2 p.m. She said she wanted to sleep, though for her an afternoon nap was unusual, but she insisted that she was just tired. By evening she had started sweating profusely and had frequent bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea. It was hours, though, before anyone could figure out what was happening. Her family rushed her to the local hospital where the doctor on call suggested they move her to a private clinic he worked in. There, he said, her condition had turned too serious and she had to be shifted to a bigger hospital in Hyderabad, about 70 kilometres away. By the time an ambulance was arranged and she was taken there, the doctors in Hyderabad said that she had suffered a heat stroke, which had caused a clot in her brain. Two hours later, at about 2.30 a.m. on June 30, Balamani died.
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Dr. Sekhar talks of how the majority of people who came in for treatment were men above 50. Several had a history of other illnesses such as diabetes or asthma. Almost all of them were either involved in construction labour or were farm hands. ?For older people it is very difficult to regulate the body temperature once it goes very high. Younger people can at least recover quickly,? he says. Among the women, however, it is not just the older women who have been affected. There are reported cases of women as young as 30 who died after returning from working in the fields.
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Classifying a heat wave as a national calamity is only logical given that the number of deaths reported across the country this year is five times the number of deaths in the recent floods in Jammu and Kashmir. The classification would help, as the onus would then be on the government to make sure that prevention, rehabilitation and compensation measures are effectively provided.

However, according to Amit Sengupta, Associate Global Coordinator, People?s Health Movement (a network of grassroots health activists), that would only solve half the problem. ?If you have an inadequate public health system that is not equipped to deal with emergencies, then the right classification is not going to help,? he says. Given how simple it is to prevent a heatstroke death, it is a shame that the country should have lost so many lives to it in 2015, at the height of the age of information.

jayant.sriram@thehindu.co.in

http://www.thehindu.com/sunday-anchor/summer-of-2015-heat-wave-and-deaths/article7289830.ece

[Ronan Kelly]

Punjab

Two people died from heat in Bathinda
BureauSunday, June 28th, 2015
Amar light, BathindaUpdated @ 9:24 PM IST

The city's railway station Sunday, two people died from the heat. Among the dead include a woman. Even before the city six people have died from the heat.

Most of the victims of the heat in the Warehousing were living next to the railway station. Sunday in Bathinda railway station platform number 3 platform No. 4 on a helpless woman and a man, were he lay unconscious. The GRP police reached the spot on being informed, the umbrella body with the help of a voluntary body and brought them to the Civil Hospital. There, doctors declared him dead. Civil Hospital DR. Gurmail Singh said both were destitute people died from the heat. Bathinda temperature of 39 degrees was recorded on Sunday.

http://www.amarujala.com/news/city/amritsar/amritsar-hindi-news/bathinda-heat-death-two-hindi-news/