It’s hot, hot! Record-breaking weather, enough to compete with General Election 2024 for front page coverage. With 2023 having been confirmed by scientists as the hottest year ever experienced by Planet Earth, the auguries for 2024 were not good. March, the first month of spring, has been cruel, setting new mercury records across the country. Bengaluru, from where ParentsWorld is published, recorded its highest March temperature of 36.4oC , with the Met department issuing a heat wave warning traversing Karnataka. The first fortnight of April has been harsher with mercury hovering above 37oC. Little wonder that the state has reported 521 heatstroke cases and two deaths since March. Elsewhere in the country too, mercury records are being smashed.
These unprecedented rising temperatures are being attributed to global warming caused by climate change. Planet Earth is heating up because of Nature-unfriendly practices in agriculture, transportation, industrialization, green cover and excess burning of fossil fuels which have prompted exponential increase of greenhouse gas emissions including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous monoxide into the atmosphere. This has significantly caused Earth’s atmosphere to warm up. Global warming is increasing at a rate of 0.2°C per decade — three times faster than in the 1980s.
While global leaders and national governments argue and back-slide on commitments made at the Paris Agreement 2015 to continuously reduce carbon emissions, scientists are predicting average global temperature will surge to new record levels. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has predicted that the next five-year period will be the warmest ever with average national temperatures rising by 1.5°C. In early March, the Indian Met Department (IMD) and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) issued a joint advisory warning of an unprecedented nationwide summer heat wave during the March-May months.
Against this dismal backdrop of mercury rising, we present guidelines to parents to safeguard children during the imminent long, hot summer. With the long summer holidays having begun countrywide and children likely to spend more time outdoors, it’s especially important for parents to devise ways and means to protect children against summer ailments. In this timely spring cover story, medical practitioners and health experts offer precautionary guidelines to cope with common summer heat-related ailments such as dehydration, heat exhaustion, strokes, and cramps.
There’s other useful content in this spring/summer issue of ParentsWorld. Check out the Early Childhood essay in which Gurgaon-based pediatrician Dr. Himanshi Kashyap shares valuable advice on managing temper tantrums in youngest children. An Adolescence essay by Delhi-based child psychologist Dr. Priyanka G. Halwasiya warns against online dating dangers. And the protein-deficiency myth of vegetarian meals is busted in our Health story.
