With heat on roads, motorists stop for a break to enjoy a cool glass of sugarcane juice in Pune. (Express Photo By Pavan Khengre) With rising temperatures in the city, the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) health department issued an advisory on Friday on precautions to be taken to avoid heatstroke. Across the state, surveillance reporting will begin from March 15 with a special focus on Vidarbha and Northern Maharashtra. “A strict watch will be kept on districts prone to heatwave,” Dr Pradeep Awate, state surveillance officer, told The Indian Express.
As maximum temperatures are set to rise to between 36 and 37 degrees Celsius over the next few days, health officials have said that prolonged exposure to higher temperatures causes heatstroke. The guidelines have cautioned against wearing tight clothes and working in high temperature rooms.
Symptoms like tiredness, fever, dry skin, lack of appetite, dizziness, nausea, headache, hypertension, anxiety and unconsciousness should not be neglected, PMC health officials said. The guidelines have advised that an affected person be kept in a ventilated or air-conditioned room, ice packs or cool wet sheets be applied on the patient’s forehead and he/she be kept hydrated.
Use sunglasses, umbrellas, hats, shoes and slippers while going outside a home in the afternoon, and people who work under the sun should use sunglasses or umbrellas and cover their head, neck, and face with wet clothes, Dr Kalpana Baliwant, official spokesperson of the PMC health department, told The Indian Express.
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Regularly drinking ORS, homemade lassi, lemon-water and buttermilk to maintain the water level in the body and keeping the house cool with use of curtains, shutters and sunshades are among the important points in the advisory. Avoid going out in the sun during afternoon from noon to 3.30, the advisory said.