21-Year-Old Girl Student Dies Of Possible Sunstroke In Odisha’s Cuttack City

Bhubaneswar: A 21-year-old girl student died of a possible heatstroke in Odisha’s Cuttack city on Saturday.

The deceased, identified as Bhubaneswari Das, was a student of City College here. She was the daughter Jyoti Bhusan Das and a resident of Kajidiha under Madhupatna police limits.

According to sources, she fell ill after reaching home from college around noon and was immediately taken to SCB Mediacal College and Hospital.  She was initially admitted to the heatstroke ward of the hospital and later shifted to the ICU, where she succumbed during treatment.

This is the first suspected death due to heatstroke in Cuttack, which had recorded 41 degree Celsius, 32.2 degrees above normal, in the last 24 hours.

The extreme heat is suspected to have also claimed the life of a 34-year-old man of Osala village under Korei police limits in Jajpur district. The deceased, Santosh Jena, fell from his motorcycle while returning home around noon. He was rushed to Korei Community Health Centre from where he was referred to SCB but died while arrangements were being made to shift him to Cuttack.

The authorities concerned, however, are yet to confirm and attribute these deaths to sunstroke.

On Friday, the state government had confirmed the season’s first sunstroke death. It had informed that 62-year-old Laxmikanta Sahu of Maheshpur in Balasore district died due to sunstroke on April 15.

The office of Special Relief Commissioner further said that the postmortem reports in two more cases – Trinath Bakul of Balangir and Surendra Gouda of Ganjam – reported in the first week of April have confirmed that the death was not due to heat stroke.

More than 70 persons cases of heat-related illness have been reported from different parts of Odisha amid the prevailing heatwave conditions with the highest of 35 from Sundargarh district, and seven each from Mayurbhanj and Angul.

According to Sundargarh district emergency office, 28 persons from different areas have been admitted to different hospitals, including RGH and SDHH, for heatwave treatment since April 1. Majority of the hospital admissions were reported in the past few days and 23 have returned home cured.