Before Tackling Heat, Let's Know Its Effect

The cruellest month begins next week, and it's time to brace for another summer of life-threatening heat.

- PRATIK KANJILAL

Earlier in March, former WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said India is probably undercounting heat-related deaths, and spoke of the need for better tracking and policy interventions based on reliable data.

Last year, the nonprofit HeatWatch reported 733 deaths and over 40,000 heatstroke cases from 17 states, while the Union health ministry reported about half as many deaths. Governments like to downplay bad news, but uneven data collection standards are also at work here. The huge variation reminds us of how starvation deaths used to be reported decades ago, when extreme poverty was commonplace.

The eventual cause of most deaths is heart failure, but it can be brought on by a wide variety of factors; it was very easy for malnutrition and starvation deaths to be attributed to heart failure. Cultural ignorance also rang false alarms about starvation. Newspapers reported sensationally that tribals and poor communities in underdeveloped areas were living on roots and leaves. But these were sometimes traditional foods whose consumption has receded in the cities.

Geography matters, too; amaranth greens are commonly used as food in the east, but not regarded as food elsewhere. Similar confusions are now being seen in reporting the effects of extreme heat.