India most likely undercounting heat-related deaths: Former WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan
WHO chief scientist and health ministry advisor Soumya Swaminathan has said. In an interview with PTI on the sidelines of TERI's World Sustainable Development Summit, she also stressed the urgent need for better tracking, preparedness and policy interventions as the country braces for another extreme summer.
Asked if India was undercounting heat-related deaths, the former director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said, «Most likely. We do not really have a good record of every death in the country and so we have to make some estimations. We have to do some sort of calculations or modelling based on what is happening.»
But recently, there have been several scientific papers that have actually tracked what are called excess deaths, Swaminathan said.
«When you look throughout the year, deaths every month will be the same in number in general. But then if you suddenly see a spike, like during COVID we saw a spike.
»So you are going along with your death rate every month fairly stable and then suddenly, in May-June, you see a spike. You can then attribute that the excess deaths are possibly due to heat," she explained.
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