Understanding heatwave mortality in New Delhi (India) as a public health issue

India is extremely vulnerable to climate change adversities especially heat waves due to its geography and both high population and population density (World Bank data, 2020). Since last decade extreme temperatures (50 degree Celsius) have been seen during the summers. (Kumar and Singh, 2021). Thus, this paper aims to understand how people in Delhi cope with heatwaves and what steps have been taken by both national and state government to mitigate theses the issues faced by people due to heatwaves. In this paper I have studied the national guidelines on Heatwave action plan and Delhi’s government Climate change action plan. Moreover, a survey was conducted to understand how people have coped with heat waves and see if the measures taken by the government had reached to the public. The paper concluded that further research is needed on the topic and Delhi government need to develop a Full-fledged Heat wave action plan as the Climate change action Plan is not sufficient to mitigate heatwaves mortality. The results also present interesting findings that the major factors behind heatwave vulnerability are as social isolation, type of accommodation, age and. existing medical conditions. The paper also presents simple and affordable techniques that people use to safeguard themselves from heatwaves such as usage of wet air coolers and spraying water on roofs in the morning and evenings.