India among top countries with highest heatwave exposure for infants, older adults: Report

New Delhi: India ranked among the top countries with the highest heatwave exposure for both vulnerable age groups — infants and older adults — along with China, the US and Russia, according to the tenth indicator report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.

Globally, total number of heatwave days decreased from 2024’s historical high of 15.3 billion person-days for older adults and 2.3 billion person-days for infants. The year 2025 was the second highest on record for heatwave exposure for both vulnerable groups combined as older adults were exposed to 10.8 billion person-days of heatwaves, while infants experienced 1.1 billion person-days, the report said.

When normalised by population size, older adults experienced on average 12.8 heatwave days per individual in 2025, while infants experienced on average 8.7 heatwave days per individual, it said.

Authors of the report, led by those at the UK’s University College London, said climate action is picking up around the world, but failing to keep pace with global warming, especially as health harms of climate change grew faster in the decade since the 2016 Paris Agreement, compared to the previous one.

A decade after the Paris Agreement, the report’s authors are calling for climate change to be formally declared a global health emergency, for a new WHO instrument to enable a coordinated global response, and for governments to put health at the centre of every climate decision, from emissions targets to climate funding.

Priorities include urgent, fair cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, sustained investment in science, and climate finance for health delivered as grants rather than loans, so that countries can adapt without taking on more debt, they said.

“A decade after the Paris Agreement, our findings are unambiguous: the health harms of climate change are growing faster than the world’s response to them, and in many cases even accelerating,” author Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, professor at University College London, said.

Real progress has been made in clean energy, health system readiness, and health-protective regulation, all of which are already delivering health benefits to local communities, Romanello said.

“However, progress has been too slow, too small, and isn’t reaching those who need it most. That is why we are calling for climate change to be formally recognised as a global health emergency, with health placed at the centre of every climate decision,” Romanello said.

In 2023 alone — the hottest year during 2016-2025 — heat was linked to a record 710,000 estimated deaths, exceeding those from malaria or HIV, with 71.5 per cent of them driven by climate change.

Altogether, climate change is estimated to have caused almost 3 million heat deaths between 2016 and 2023, the authors said.

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