New Delhi: With several parts of the country facing severe heatwave, the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has created a digital platform to record cases and deaths due to heat stroke, officials in the know said on the House.
Amid concerns about climate change leading to severe heat waves and its impact on public health, doctors at 120 government hospitals in 21 states will now upload data directly to this platform to help public health policymakers make informed decisions.
Manual records will be upgraded to electronic monitoring, a senior NCDC official said. The data is sent to the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP). “Diagnosis of heatstroke deaths is a challenging process and cannot be done by any doctor. Only experts can identify the problem. For real-time monitoring of such incidents, there are now 21 states and 120 hospitals under the surveillance network.”
What is heat stroke?
Heatstroke is the most serious heat-related illness. The body loses the ability to control its temperature, which then rises rapidly as the sweating mechanism fails and the body is unable to cool down. With heatstroke, body temperature can rise to 106°F or more within 10 to 15 minutes. There may be permanent disability or death if the person does not receive emergency treatment.
Symptoms of heatstroke include confusion, altered mental status, slurred speech, loss of consciousness (coma), hot, dry skin or heavy sweating, seizures, very high body temperature, and is fatal if treatment is delayed.
Heat stroke data
“Supervision during the summer season takes place from March to approximately July. We inform about the number of heatstroke cases and deaths in the country so that the impact of the heat is understood. Climate change is a major problem and more work needs to be done. We are trying to prevent such circumstances,” the official noted.
When it comes to recording data on heatstroke, states like Gujarat, Odisha, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, West Bengal, Goa, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are doing well. States like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand are performing moderately, according to NCDC.
“We expect all other states to take the initiative. There has already been a huge improvement in data collection. “Some states are even conducting patient-based surveillance – recording the names of patients who die due to heatstroke – and sharing them with the Union government,” the statement said. official added.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said that the intensity of the heat wave in Odisha, West Bengal and Jharkhand has reduced slightly on Saturday, but predicted that the scorching temperatures will continue till May 5-6. The weather bureau has said that heatwave to severe heatwave conditions prevailed in parts of Gangetic West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Telangana, with maximum temperatures 3-5 degrees Celsius above normal in these regions.
In Maharashtra, 23 cases of heatstroke have been reported till the end of April, but no fatalities have been reported. However, despite the state experiencing high temperatures, 2024 data from the public health department indicates that there has been a major decline in the number of recorded cases of heatstroke till April 12 compared to the same period last year. Till April 12, the state reported only 77 cases, which is in stark contrast to the 373 cases recorded during the same period last year. This is a decrease of 79.3% in heat-related cases.
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Published: May 5, 2024 7:29 PM IST