More than a dozen dying per day from heatstroke in Mandalay

Hundreds have fallen victim to hyperthermia and dozens have died in temperatures as high as 44 degrees Celsius in and near Mandalay in late April, according to aid workers in local social welfare groups. A member of a Mandalay-based social welfare network said his team had saved around 10 people per day with treatment for heatstroke, but that an even greater number could not be saved and succumbed to the temperatures. “On many days, 15 people would die. We’d have to rescue around 10 from the heat. These numbers are true for every organization in our network,” said the social welfare officer. Other members of the same organisation—one of around 200 such humanitarian groups in Mandalay—estimated that at least a dozen people were dying each day and well over 100 had died in the last two weeks of April. Most the victims were poor or manual workers, they added. A spokesperson for the Myanmar Social Welfare Association (Mandalay) told Myanmar Now that they had to be ready to provide round-the-clock emergency rescue services due to the rising deaths from the heat. Social workers recovering the body of a heatstroke victim on the road A woman living in Mandalay’s Maha Aungmyay Township said she and her neighbours only had access to electricity for two hours a day. “It would help a lot if only we could use a fan in this heat. But we only get electricity for two hours at most out of 24,” the Maha Aungmyay resident said. “Even then, the power cuts out intermittently. Sometimes, we only get 15 minutes of electricity and then it will go out for three more hours. We can’t pump water if we don’t have electricity. We can’t even cook a pot of rice properly without interruption. It’s scorching hot and we can’t sleep at night,” she added. The wealthy can usually afford to buy generators and solar panels or check in to local hotels and guesthouses with electricity provided all day, a local man in his 30s said, but even hotel rooms are now selling out in Mandalay. “The hotels are all full now, even the seedy inns and guesthouses down the alleys and side streets. It’s not even possible to book a room. Even if you have money, it’s hopeless,” the man said. “I saw some working people try to find spots in the shade at parks with a lot of trees, monasteries, shopping centres, and near the creeks and rivers, because they still have to go out and work every day to put food on the table,” he added. Deaths caused by the excessive heat have also become common in Magway Region, the hottest part of the country, where one city hit a record-breaking temperature of 48.2 degrees on the last day of April. While these dire effects of the heatwave are at least known to the public, little information is available on how it has impacted the inmates at prisons in the same areas, which are notorious for abuse and overcrowding. The military council is reportedly holding twice the number of inmates at Mandalay’s Obo Prison than the facility has the capacity to house, with prisoners forced to pay bribes even for tolerably cool spaces to sleep.

More than a dozen dying per day from heatstroke in Mandalay

In a season of record-breaking temperatures, frequent power cuts have left most people in Myanmar without air conditioning and few effective options to escape the heat

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