India experienced an additional 40 million heatwave exposure events in 2016 as compared to 2012, raising concerns over a “dangerous surge” in negative health impacts, according to a new study. A heatwave exposure event refers to one heatwave, being experienced by one person. The frequency, intensity and duration of heatwave events in India have also increased over the past half-century and the country will likely be among the worst affected by climate change given its “weaker health systems and poorer infrastructure”, the study said. These are the findings of a study called Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change--a global, interdisciplinary research collaboration between 27 academic institutions and inter-governmental organizations, including The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and The Centre for Environmental Health. Tracking 41 indicators across finance and economics, public and political engagement, mitigation actions, vulnerability and more, the study uses data compiled by the Lancet Countdown, which documents the human impacts of climate change and provides public health recommendations in response. Since 1990, every region of the globe has become steadily more vulnerable to extreme increases of heat, the study found. In 2017, 157 million more people globally were exposed to heatwave events compared to in 2000, with the average person “experiencing an additional 1.4 days of heatwaves per year over the same period”. Increased exposure to heat can cause a decrease in labour output, exacerbate urban air pollution, burden health systems ill-equipped to cope with the effects of heat stress and promote the spread of diseases like cholera and dengue fever across endemic areas. “Climate change threatens to undermine the public health gains of previous decades and is one of the great existential threats of this century”, said Nick Watts, Executive Director, Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change. “In the past we have seen the health profession and medical profession come together and move mountains in response to the health risks from tobacco, HIV and polio,” said Watts. “We need a similar response to climate change”. India already bears significant “social and economic costs” from climate change, with each additional tonne of carbon dioxide emitted costing India $86 -- almost double the expense borne by the USA ($48) and Saudi Arabia ($47), according to this 2018 paper published in Nature Climate Change, a scientific journal. This year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that if the global community are not able to limit a temperature rise to 1.5 degrees as forecast, climate-related risks to livelihoods, food security, health, water supply and human security will further intensify, IndiaSpend reported in October 2018. It is therefore “of prime importance” for India to reduce its carbon emissions and air pollution levels, specifically targeting the use of coal, oil and natural gas. While a number of sectors have begun “a low-carbon transmission”, overall slow progress and lack of preparation for the effects of climate changes across the past two to three decades is threatening “both human lives and the viability of the national health systems they depend on”, the report warned. Heatwaves and heat stress Over the last two decades, there has been a “marked increase” in the the duration of heatwaves in India, as well as the numbers of Indians exposed to heatwaves the report said. The average duration of a heatwave has increased by 150%, from 2 days in 2012 to almost 5 days in 2016.