South Asia and Southeast Asia contributed more than half of the global deaths attributed to high temperature. In 2021, South Asia recorded 209,537 deaths and Southeast Asia recorded 32,230 deaths due to high temperatures.
A new report Disease burden attributable to high temperature between 1990 and 2021 in South Asia and Southeast Asia, with projections to 2045 published in https://tropmedhealth.biomedcentral.com/ says that in South Asia and Southeast Asia, Pakistan bore the highest number and rate of deaths attributed to high temperature. The population above 55-years and below 5 years in South Asia and Southeast Asia experienced higher disease burden attributed to high temperature.
Recent evidence suggests that high temperatures are increasingly linked to escalating emergency department visits, hospitalisations, and mortality rates, with significant rises in cardiovascular and respiratory disease mortality. Globally, non-optimal temperatures account for 5.08m annual deaths, with mortality rates rising 1.5 times faster in tropical regions.
South Asia and Southeast Asia, home to over 2bn people, are at the forefront of a rapidly escalating global health crisis, which have emerged as critical focus points in understanding the health impacts of extremely high temperature. The characteristic unprecedented demographic transitions, population ageing and rapid urbanisation, coupled with limited healthcare infrastructure and rising temperature, have transformed these regions into epicentres of climate-related health impacts.
Also, according to the latest edition of the Lancet’s annual report on climate and health, high and rising temperatures are killing nearly 550,000 people around the world each year. The new report reveals that on a population adjusted basis since the 1990s the heat death toll has surged by more than 20%.
The report finings reveal that driven by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions; climate change is increasingly claiming lives and harming people's health worldwide. Mean annual temperatures exceeded 1·5°C above those of pre-industrial times for the first time in 2024.
Authored by 128 multidisciplinary experts worldwide, the 2025 report, which is the ninth in the series is termed as one of the most comprehensive assessment of the links between climate change and health.
The report reveals that, as the health risks and impacts of climate change break and create new records, progress is being reversed across key areas, further threatening health and survival. However, the evidence in this report also exposes important opportunities to accelerate action and prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.