Did the announcement of compensation of ₹1 lakh to victims of heat wave by Andhra Pradesh Government on May 23 trigger a spike in the reported death figures?
Going by the claims recorded with the district administration, the answer seems to be in the affirmative. More than a 1,000 deaths were recorded in the 13 districts of the State during the week May 24-31, which turned out to be the worst this summer.
The heat wave conditions, which started developing since May 13 intensified after May 20. With temperatures hovering a couple of degrees above normal, the causalities reached around 250, when Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu after taking stock of the situation called for effective steps to tackle it and pay compensation on priority to the kin of victims.
In the two weeks since, the total deaths reported has reached 1,720. Of these, nearly 500 have been confirmed as due to Sun stroke by a three-member committee. In 100 cases, the compensation has also been paid, says Dhananjaya Reddy, Commissioner for Disaster Management, AP. Attributing the high number of deaths to the deadly combination of consistently high temperatures and humidity, Reddy told
“We have a mechanism in place to verify these claims. The committee including the tehsildar, medical officer and station house officer in the district scrutinise the veracity of the claims,” he said. The worst hit are the coastal districts of Prakasam (333), Guntur (237), East Godavari (204), Vizianagaram (199) and Vizag (193). According to officials, NREGA workers, farm and construction labour and old people living in thatched huts that could not shield them from the searing heat formed a sizeable number of the victims reported so far.
But Nellore District seems to have bucked this trend. The district, which usually has the longest stretch (30 days in summer) of above normal temperatures, reported very few deaths.
The criteriaThe guidelines framed for eligibility for compensation in 2014 include filing of an FIR, post mortem, hospitalisation, time of death (exposure to Sun) and should be between 18 and 69. Incidentally, nearly 1,000 deaths were reported during the summer of 2014 in the combined State of AP and the established number of victims of heat wave was close to just 350, for whom compensation was paid. Similarly, the earlier year saw the reporting of nearly 450 deaths.
In Telangana, the situation was a shade better with the total deaths reported being under 500. People in the districts of Medak, Khammam, Nizamabad and Karimnagar were the worst affected.
A top Medical Health Officer in Hyderabad, P Venkateswara Rao said “In Hyderabad, there were no clinically reported cases of heat wave deaths in government hospitals and clinics so far. However, private hospitals say that they had treated a few cases.