Heat stroke accounted for 13.6% of forces of nature deaths between 2016-20

On Monday, Maharashtra’s health department said that the state had recorded over 374 cases of heatstroke in March and April. Moreover, the state had registered 25 deaths due to heatstroke—the highest in six years.

While a country-wise analysis is not available for the last two years, data from the ministry of statistics and programme implementation’s annual Envistats release shows that between 2016-2020, heatstroke accounted for 13.6 per cent of total deaths due to forces of nature. Of the 38,070 lives that the country lost due to forces of nature, heatstroke accounted for 5,159 of such deaths.

The year 2020 accounted for the lowest number of heat stroke-related deaths.

Given that temperatures in March and April were at 122-year highs, this year may break previous records.

Further data analysis shows that ten of the 20 states and Union Territories for which data was available recorded the highest average number of heatwave days in the last decade.

Among them, the central and western parts of the country were worst affected. Madhya Pradesh recorded four or five heatwave days per year between 1970 and 2009. In the last 12 years, the average number of heatwave days increased to seven.

In Maharashtra, the number of days went up from four or five to six. In the last 12 years, Rajasthan recorded 12 average days of heatwaves, compared to nine between 2000-09 and 10 during 1990-99.

For Uttarakhand, the average number of days went up from four during 2000-09 to nine during 2010-21.

Between 2015-19, deaths due to heatwave events had increased 1.5-times compared to two decades ago. While India reported 2,284 deaths due to heatwaves during 1995-99, between 2015-19, India had registered 3,504 deaths due to heatwaves. In 2015 alone, India recorded 2,081 deaths due to heatwaves.

The government initiatives on heat health warning systems and action plans have helped reduce mortality. India recorded just 27 deaths due to heat waves in the last two years. The country needs to develop better initiatives as temperatures rise and the intensity of such events increases.

According to the IPCC report, the probability of hot temperature events would increase 4.1-times if temperatures were to rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius.