India saw a 55% rise in deaths due to extreme heat between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021, a recent study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, has found. Exposure to heat also caused a loss of 167.2 billion potential labour hours among Indians in 2021, the study noted. This, it adds, resulted in loss of incomes equivalent to about 5.4% of the country GDP. India has faced increasingly intense heatwaves in recent years. While many parts of the country have regularly experienced heatwaves in summer, experts have said these are now becoming longer, more intense and frequent. In the annual Lancet Countdown report published - which looked at 103 countries - researchers found that the heatwave which hit India and Pakistan between March and April was 30 times more likely to have happened because of climate change.

Exposure to extreme heat affects health directly, exacerbating underlying conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory disease, and causing heat stroke, adverse pregnancy outcomes, worsened sleep patterns, poor mental health, and increased injury-related death, the study noted, adding that vulnerable populations were most at risk. Earlier this year, a study by the UK Met Office had also found that climate change had made record- breaking heatwaves in northwest India and Pakistan 100 times more likely. Without climate change, such extreme temperatures would occur only once every 312 years, it said.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan-INP