NEW DELHI/NOIDA: Eight more people succumbed to heatstroke in major hospitals of the city in the past 24 hours, sources said on Friday.
A majority of these fatalities were reported in Safdarjung Hospital where six patients succumbed in a day.
During this period, ten new patients were brought to the hospital suffering from heatstroke. However, this figure is less than the previous day.
According to hospital sources, 26 patients are currently undergoing treatment of whom 14 are on ventilators.
Since March, 88 patients have been admitted to the hospital due to heat-related illnesses. Of these, 66 patients were admitted in just four days between June 16 and June 20.
A total of 28 people have died due to heat stroke in Safdarjung Hospital since June 1.
In Delhi government’s Loknayak Hospital, two new patients were admitted in a day due to heatstroke while two patients who were admitted there and were put on ventilator died due to heat stroke.
Doctors said that most of the patients coming to the hospital are those who have been referred from other hospitals.
Ram Manohar Lohia’s Medical Director Dr Ajay Shukla said no new death due to heat was reported on Friday. However, two new patients were admitted. Meanwhile, no information could be received from AIIMS as the premier institute refused to share the data citing instruction from the Ministry of Health.
Noida
Amid a severe heatwave, the Gautam Buddh Nagar health department here has received at least 75 bodies for post-mortem within a period of three days from June 18-20, according to officials. Senior health officials of the district said usually the number of bodies received for post-mortem in a day averages around seven or eight and described the fatalities as “unexpected”.
The department, however, could not conclusively say if these deaths were directly caused due to the heatwave. Private hospitals have provided their mortuary freezers to the department to keep dead bodies, according to officials.
“There has been an increase in the number of post-mortem cases and this increase is quite unexpected. Normally, there are 7-8 cases per day. On June 18, we received 28 bodies. On June 19, we received 25 bodies and by the evening of June 20, we had received 22 bodies,” Gautam Buddh Nagar’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Suneel Kumar Sharma said.
Of these bodies, he said hospitals had received 20 as “brought dead” and 10 of them were “unidentified”. In view of the “unexpected” rise in cases, the staff deployment for post-mortem duty has also been increased.