Pet dogs and strays suffer in Asia heatwave
By Sailendra Sil with Rose Troup Buchanan in Bangkok
Kolkata (AFP) May 1, 2024
Soaring temperatures across Kolkata have brought life in much of the Indian megacity to a standstill, but veterinarian Partha Das cannot recall a time when he was more busy.
His clinic has been swamped by distressed members of the public carrying in beloved pets suffering nosebleeds, severe skin rashes and lapses into unconsciousness in a relentless heatwave suffocating much of South and Southeastern Asia over the past week.
“Many pets are also hospitalized for three or four consecutive days, and they are taking a long time to get back to normal,” the 57-year-old told AFP from his surgery.
“We are getting several heatstroke cases in a day. It’s unprecedented.”
Kolkata has sweltered through days of punishing heat, peaking at 43 degrees Celsius for the hottest single April day since 1954, according to the city’s weather bureau.
Streets of the normally bustling colonial-era capital have been almost deserted in the afternoons as its 15 million people do what they can to stay out of the sun.
But even cats and dogs lucky enough to have an owner have been susceptible to falling ill, with Das saying the heat had triggered a surge in dehydration-related illnesses in pets from around the city.
Teacher Sriparna Bose said her two cats had become sullen and withdrawn in a way she hadn’t seen before when the heatwave hit.
“They are refusing food,” she said. “They hide in dark, cold corners of the room and won’t come out.”
The situation is worse for the 70,000 stray dogs estimated to live on city streets by municipal authorities, which have no owner but are often fed and tended to by nearby residents.
Many are spending the day taking refuge from the sun under parked cars, while a lucky few are hosed down by sympathetic humans to help them cool off.
“They are finding it difficult to stand on their soft paws because the roads are so hot,” said Gurshaan Kohli of Humanimal Foundation, a local animal welfare charity for stray animals.
“Scores of dogs and cats have died” even though he and his colleagues had rushed them to clinics for treatment, he added.
– ‘This year was worse’ –
Large swathes of South and Southeast Asia are struggling through a heatwave that has broken temperature records and forced millions of children to stay home as schools close across the region.
Experts say climate change makes heatwaves more frequent, longer and more intense, while the El Nino phenomenon is also driving this year’s exceptionally warm weather.
The heat has taken its toll on animals across the continent.
“They are eating less, and they are reluctant to move,” Henna Pekko of Rescue PAWS, which operates an animal shelter near Thailand’s capital Bangkok, told AFP.
With temperatures in Thailand exceeding 40 degrees Celsius over the past week, Pekko said her charity had taken to bringing its rescues to the ocean to cool down with a swim, while older dogs were being kept indoors.
“We are definitely taking extra precautions because of this weather,” she told AFP, adding that the stress on animals from the heat was the worst she had experienced in the kingdom.
“Last year was bad. This year was worse.”
April temperatures in Bangladesh hottest on record
Dhaka (AFP) May 1, 2024 –
Bangladesh’s weather bureau said Wednesday that last month was the hottest April on record, with the South Asian nation and much of the region still enduring a suffocating heatwave.
Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
The punishing heat last month prompted Bangladesh’s government to close schools across the country, keeping an estimated 32 million students at home.
“This year the heatwave covered around 80 percent of the country. We’ve not seen such unbroken and expansive heatwaves before,” Bangladesh Meteorological Department senior forecaster Muhammad Abul Kalam Mallik told AFP.
He said last month was the hottest April in Bangladesh since records began in 1948 “in terms of hot days and area coverage in the country”.
Weather stations around Bangladesh this year recorded average daily maximum temperatures between two and eight degrees hotter than the 33.2-degree-Celsius (91.8-degree-Fahrenheit) average daily high for April over a 30-year period to 2010, he added.
Health department spokesman Selim Raihan told AFP the government had confirmed at least 11 heatstroke-related deaths in the past 10 days.
Rains are expected to bring some relief to Bangladesh from Thursday after a week of sweltering temperatures, with Dhaka recording several days over 40C.
Mallik said the severity of the heat had been worsened by the absence of the usual pre-monsoon April thunderstorms, which normally cool the country ahead of summer.
“Bangladesh gets an average of 130.2 millimetres of rain in April. But this April we got an average of one millimetre of rain,” he said.
Mallik said the bureau was checking data to confirm whether this year also marked record low rainfalls for April.
Schools in Bangladesh will remain closed until Sunday.
The government ordered classrooms reopened last weekend, but a top Bangladeshi court directed them to shut again on Monday after taking into consideration reports that several teachers had died in the heatwave.
– ‘Life has become unbearable’ –
Thousands gathered at mosques and in open fields around the Muslim-majority nation last week to pray for rain.
“Life has become unbearable due to lack of rains,” Muhammad Abu Yusuf, an Islamic cleric who led one such service, told AFP last week.
“Poor people are suffering immensely.”
Mahfuzur Rahman, the owner of a cigarette stall in one of the capital Dhaka’s largest wholesale markets, also said the past week had been “unbearable”.
“Some days were so hot that it felt like my head was spinning. I can’t concentrate and I feel drowsy. But I have to sell enough to make at least some money,” he told AFP.
“I don’t know why it is happening. Maybe we have tortured the earth. Maybe we have sinned.”
Large swathes of South and Southeast Asia are sweltering through a heatwave that has topped temperature records from Myanmar to the Philippines, with the El Nino phenomenon also driving this year’s exceptionally warm weather.
Weather bureaus in Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and India have all forecast temperatures above 40C (104F).
The months preceding the region’s monsoon, or rainy season, are usually hot, but temperatures this year are well above average in many countries.
Asia is also warming faster than the global average, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.
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