By Mr. Mihir R. Bhatt
March 12, the International Awareness Day for Avoidable Deaths (IAD4AD), challenges us to confront a painful reality: many deaths we accept as “normal” consequences of heat are neither sudden nor inevitable. Extreme heat is one such risk. It is predictable, measurable, and preventable. Yet every year, people continue to die quietly during heatwaves. These deaths are not natural disasters; they are avoidable deaths, and they demand anticipatory action.
For over three decades, the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) has worked across India and South Asia to reduce disaster-related deaths by translating early warnings, local knowledge, and governance into protection on the ground. Extreme heat has emerged as one of the clearest examples where this approach is both necessary, urgent, and possible.
AIDMI’s work consistently shows in 11 cities that heat deaths follow patterns of exposure and inequality. Informal workers, small business owners, street vendors, transport workers, women working in poorly ventilated homes, and older persons face the highest risks, not only because heat affects them differently, but because protection does not reach them. When people must choose between losing income and risking their lives, extreme heat becomes a clear issue of loss and damage, here and now.
Through city- and community-level engagement in six states, AIDMI has supported the translation of heat science into action. This includes strengthening Heat Action Plans, supporting community-based early warning, building awareness among small businesses, and documenting how heat affects livelihoods, health, and dignity. Field evidence from AIDMI’s work shows that simple measures, adjusting work hours, ensuring access to drinking water, providing shaded rest areas, promoting reflective roofing, and delivering timely warnings, can prevent illness and illness leading to death.
AIDMI’s work highlights that unrecorded heat deaths are a governance failure. When heat-related deaths are misclassified or ignored, families receive no recognition, no support, and no justice. Loss and damage are not only about damaged infrastructure or lost crops; they are also about human lives lost without acknowledgement. AIDMI has long argued that heat deaths must be counted, analysed, and acted upon, because what remains invisible cannot be prevented.
AIDMI also works closely with government systems, emphasising that prevention is a public responsibility. Institutions such as the India Meteorological Department and the National Disaster Management Authority have made important progress through forecasts, guidelines, and planning frameworks. Experience from the field shows that the next step is ensuring these systems reach last-mile communities, migrant workers, and small enterprises, where heat risk is highest.
On this International Awareness Day for Avoidable Deaths, AIDMI’s message is clear: extreme heat deaths are avoidable if prevention is prioritised. Every heatwave death reflects a missed warning, a missing service, or delayed action. Preventing these deaths is not about new technology alone, it is about governance that values every human life equally, in all circumstances.
Making extreme heat deaths avoidable is both possible and urgent. AIDMI’s work demonstrates that when science, community action, and government responsibility come together at the service of heat-affected people – men and women – loss and damage can be reduced, one protected life at a time.
Extreme heat deaths are not acts of nature. They are acts of neglect, when warning exists, solutions exist, and yet protection does not. Every life lost to heat is an avoidable loss and a damage to the system.
Short Author’s Bio
Mr. Mihir R. Bhatt is Director of All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI), India and is an ADN Advisory Board Member.