Dizzying temperatures have caused water shortages in thousands of Indian villages and killed hundreds more people over the past day, driving the death toll from a weeks-long heat wave to at least 1,826, officials have said.
Hospitals were urged to give emergency treatment to people suffering from heatstroke as authorities on Friday cancelled doctors’ leave, set up water distribution points and warned people not to venture out.
“The main thing is prevention in this situation to ensure that preventive measures are being taken,” said Charan Singh, additional director of public health in Delhi, where top temperatures have hit 45 degrees Celsius.
Meteorological officials have called the heat wave “severe” and warned that it would continue for at least another two days across a huge swath of the South Asian country from Tamil Nadu in the south to the Himalayan foothill state of Himachal Pradesh.
Most of those killed by heat-related conditions including dehydration and heat stroke, have been in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where 100 people died on Thursday as temperatures hovered at about 43C.
Thousands of water tankers were delivering supplies to more than 4,000 villages and hamlets facing acute water shortages in the central state of Maharashtra, state officials told the Press Trust of India news agency.