Deadly Heat in India

India is facing another record hot and potentially deadly summer. People living in underdeveloped parts of central India are most vulnerable to the health impacts of heat waves, a Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) for India has found. The index considered various factors including a person’s age, income and health, as well as the green cover in an area, as having a bearing on people’s heat vulnerability, and its analysis of 640 (of the 707) districts in the country finds ten districts to be ‘very high risk’. Six of these are in relatively underdeveloped areas in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In contrast, the 20 districts in the ‘very low risk’ category are mostly in the relatively developed states of Kerala and Goa and the union territory of Lakshadweep, Business Standard reported. The number of deaths due to heat waves recorded in 2015–more than 2,400–was higher than the number of deaths caused by any other natural disaster.