Rising heat cost Bangladesh $1.7bn and 2.5bn workdays in 2024: World Bank report

Bangladesh has lost at least 2.5 billion workdays in 2024 due to illnesses caused by rising temperatures, a World Bank study has found. The economic cost of these losses amounts to between $1.33 billion and $1.78 billion, the equivalent of 0.3 to 0.4 percent of the country’s GDP. The findings were published on Monday in a report titled “An Unsustainable Life: The Impact of Heat on Health and the Economy of Bangladesh”. The study was based on temperature and humidity data from 1976 to 2023, alongside two rounds of surveys conducted in 2024 with 16,000 participants. The keynote paper was presented by the report's co-authors Iffat Mahmud and Wameq A Raza. According to the report, Bangladesh’s maximum recorded temperature has...