Heat wave kills 20 in southern India

A heat wave in southern India has killed 20 people over the last week as temperatures reached 46.6 C (115.8 F), officials in Andhra Pradesh state said today.

“We are not able to sit in the buildings as it has become unbearably hot. At the same time, we cannot go out because of the heat wave and fear of sunstroke,” said KS Jawahar Reddy, the top government administrator in East Godavari district.

Last year, a heat wave killed more than 1,000 people in the state, most of them older people unable to bear temperatures that reached 50 C (122 F).

Most deaths reported in the past week have been from the state’s Krishna and East Godavari districts where high temperatures and shortages of drinking water caused dehydration and sunstroke.

More than half the state’s 23 districts are in the grip of the heat wave.

Tin-roofed shanties house hundreds of thousands of impoverished people. The heat wave hit at a time when they were already battling the state’s worst drought in 40 years because of last year’s poor monsoon rains.

The state government has launched a food-for-work programme – offering grain and money in return for people building roads and bridges in the affected areas.

The East Godavari district is 310 miles north-east of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh.