In hottest city on Earth, mothers bear brunt of climate change

“If we go to hell, we’ll take a blanket,” is a common joke in Jacobabad, Pakistan, where people are accustomed to hot weather. But during the current extreme heatwave, with temperatures peaking over 51 ℃, even they are finding life unbearable — and the burden is particularly high during pregnancy and for homemakers. A global paper by the British Medical Journal titled "Associations between high temperatures in pregnancy and risk of preterm birth, low birth weight, and stillbirths: systematic review and meta-analysis" found that, for every 1 ℃ in temperature rise, the number of stillbirths and premature deliveries increases by about 5%. In Jacobabad, many women work long days in hot fields and widespread poverty and frequent power cuts mean many people have no means of cooling, or even sufficient water. Click to watch 3'26" video and read article from Reuters.