-The Hindu Study finds nearly 5.18 excess deaths for every 1,000 people. Chennai: A study analysing the registered COVID-19 deaths in Chennai district found a high degree of excess deaths. A figure of nearly 5.18 excess deaths for every 1,000 people has been reported in the study published in Lancet Infectious Diseases. The study also found that during the second wave of COVID-19 in Chennai, there was an increase in the percentage...

-Livemint.com A new paper suggests the second covid-19 wave had a more fatal impact on Chennai’s poorer neighbourhoods than richer ones Poorer communities saw far more excess deaths during the pandemic than richer neighbourhoods, evidence from a new Chennai-based study shows. Taken with data from other parts of the country, the findings suggest that India’s poor, particularly the elderly, may have disproportionately borne the burden of the pandemic’s fatal impact. In a study...

-The Hindu Policy paper offering a range of evidence-based solutions for India, which reports the highest number of suicide deaths in the world As India lumbers on with the formulation of its national suicide prevention strategy, in the works for some years now, The Lancet has published a broad and comprehensive policy paper offering a range of evidence-based solutions across sectors to reduce the very high suicide rate in the country. The paper...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...

-The Hindu The ‘Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change’ notes that 295 billion hours of potential work were lost across the globe in 2020 due to heat exposure. India has become 15% more vulnerable to extremes of heat than in 1990, according to ‘the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change’, a flagship report of the medical journal The Lancet that provides periodic updates on the scientific literature on the relationship...