India Pharma Outlook Team | Wednesday, 28 October 2026
Lancet Ranking reveals India among the top countries, like China, the United States, and Russia, for heatwave exposure faced by infants and older adults.
In 2025, the second-highest year on record for these groups, older adults worldwide faced 10.8 billion person-days of heatwaves while infants faced 1.1 billion.
Climate change has already driven almost 3 million heat-linked deaths between 2016 and 2023, with health harms accelerating since the Paris Agreement.
What the ranking reveals about India’s readiness for its most vulnerable people is more urgent. Has the country’s heat response closed the protection gap for infants and the elderly, or does a clear blind spot remain?
As per Lancet ranking, older adults averaged 12.8 heatwave days each in 2025; infants averaged 8.7. India stands among the countries with the highest heat exposure for both groups.
These absolute numbers carry extra weight here because India has one of the world’s largest populations of infants and older people. Many live in informal housing or areas with limited access to cooling. The ranking therefore points to real human risk, not just a statistical position.
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India has expanded its heat response in recent years through wider alerts, early warnings and greater public awareness. These steps mark real progress. Yet the Lancet data still place India at the top for exposure among the two groups least able to adapt on their own.
Most current measures focus on outdoor workers, general public advisories and broad warnings. The practical protection for infants, especially those in poorly ventilated homes, and for home-bound or isolated elderly people remains limited.
These barriers include uneven access to cooling, weak last-mile outreach, and health systems that still struggle to prioritize these groups during extreme heat.
India faces dual demographic pressure as a large young population and a rapidly growing number of older adults. This makes high exposure rankings more consequential than in countries with better baseline cooling or smaller absolute numbers of vulnerable people.
Urban heat islands and rural isolation amplify the risk further. Infants and older adults cannot easily move, cool themselves, or seek help without support. The ranking therefore carries higher human stakes in the Indian context.
The Lancet ranking works best not as a league table but as a mirror. India’s heat response has grown, yet the groups least able to protect themselves still sit in a clear blind spot.
The next real test is whether heat measures move beyond broad alerts to concrete, last-mile protection for infants and the elderly. Until that shift happens, the ranking will continue to expose unfinished business.
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