20 people die due to sunstroke in Odisha in 3 days

Bhubaneswar, Jun 3 (PTI) Twenty people died due to sunstroke in Odisha over the last three days as the state was reeling under intense heatwave conditions, an official statement said.

Since Friday, a total of 99 suspected sunstroke deaths were reported by different districts. After post-mortem and inquiry, 20 were confirmed as sunstroke deaths, while two deaths happened due to other causes, said the statement issued by the state’s Special Relief Commission.

An investigation is underway in the rest of the cases, it added.

Prior to this, 42 suspected sunstroke deaths were reported, and of them six cases were confirmed, and it was found that another six deaths happened due to other causes, the statement said.

The deaths were mostly reported from Bolangir, Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, Keonjhar, Sonepur, Sundergarh and Balasore districts, officials said.

Chief Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena and Special Relief Commissioner Satyabrata Sahu reviewed the situation with the district collectors on Sunday.

They instructed the district administrations to implement the advisory on heatwave, and take precautionary measures.

The districts were also asked to ensure post-mortem examination of every suspected sunstroke death for sanction of ex-gratia.

Also, a joint inquiry by the local revenue officer and the local medical officer needs to be conducted to ascertain the exact cause of each death, officials said.

Issuing an ‘orange’ alert, the IMD said heatwave conditions are very likely to prevail in Bargarh and Bolangir till Tuesday morning. It also issued a ‘yellow’ alert for Kalahandi, Nuapada and Sonepur districts.

Apart from this, the IMD said that the hot and humid weather conditions are likely in Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Kendrapara, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, Puri, Khurda, Nayagarh, Ganjam and Gajapati.

The coastal districts of the state received heavy rains on Monday night, brining down the mercury in the region.