Kolkata: A Doordarshan news anchor in West Bengal fainted on live television recently.
It was quite hot even inside the studio, and ironically, news reader Lopamudra Sinha was presenting a report on the prevailing heatwave situation during a morning newscast on DD Bangla when she had a blackout.
Sinha, who later took to Facebook to share the incident, revealed that her blood pressure plummeted suddenly during the live broadcast, resulting in her blackout.
It was when she was reading a story on weather conditions in different districts that her speech started slurring and she experienced fading vision.
Sinha tried to continue after having a glass of water while the screen showed some visual. But her condition deteriorated, and she lost consciousness and fell down from her chair.
“My speech started slurring, and ultimately I could see the teleprompter fade away,” Sinha said.
He colleagues rushed to her aid and managed to revive her within a minute or so.
Sinha said that though Doordarshan premises are centrally airconditioned, there was a problem with the AC plant in the Kolkata centre the day before that incident.
“Generally the floors are quite chilled and it gets very cold during winter. But yesterday there was a problem with AC plant and also a lot of lights were used in the programmes before mine which made it quite hot,” said Sinha.
She said her fault was that she should have kept some water or ORS with her in such conditions.
Thanking her colleagues for their prompt help and saying a prayer to God for keeping her alive, she urged people to take proper measures to cope with the unprecedented heatwave.
