Heat stroke deaths often make the news – but not the lingering problems that afflict survivors

The death toll from extreme heat events always makes the headlines. But what happens when you’re on the brink of joining that number, and are brought back from the edge?

Devi Prasad Ahirwar, a 55 year-old former security guard, collapsed from a heat stroke in Delhi last year during one of the country’s worst and most prolonged episodes of extreme heat.

Unconscious, with a dangerously high fever, he spent six days on a ventilator before miraculously gaining consciousness. He’d survived despite the odds, experts said.

A year later, however, the heat stroke isn’t entirely behind him. Survival gave Devi Prasad a second chance at life, but it’s a life marred by strange new afflictions his family is learning to live with.

The severity of his heat stroke has resulted in rare neurological side-effects – he can no longer speak clearly, write, or get up from the floor without feeling dizzy. To walk, he now uses the help of a stick when in the past, he could walk for kilometres on end without tiring.

He now spends his days mostly silent and resting, or walking up and down the courtyard outside his village home. “He was a healthy man before he collapsed,” said Binodi Ahirwar, his wife. “It’s been a year of...

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