With the heatwave across India rising above 40-degree Celsius in almost every part of the country, a Doordarshan anchor fell unconscious live on TV after her blood pressure dropped. The anchor with the Kolkata branch of Doordarshan – Lopamudra Sinha – was heard slurring while reading out the information before she blacked out.
"The teleprompter faded away and I blacked out... I collapsed on my chair," she said in a video shared on her Facebook page.
Later, according to an NDTV report, the anchor clarified that she fainted citing intense heat and her blood pressure plummeted suddenly. She even noted that there was extreme heat inside the studio due to some snag in the cooling system.
Apart from this, Sinha added that before the morning broadcast on Thursday, she was feeling unwell and parched.
"I never keep a water bottle with me. Be it a fifteen-minute or half an hour broadcast, I have never felt the need to sip water during broadcasts in my 21 years of career. But, I felt parched even as 15 minutes were left for the broadcast to end. When the TV was showing visuals and not my face, I pointed to the floor manager and asked for a bottle of water," she said in FB post in Bangla.
Among other things, Sinha said wasn't getting a chance to have some water s general stories were running without any bytes. "Towards the end (of the bulletin), a byte came and I used the opportunity to drink some water."
Though she completed two stories after drinking the water, she fainted when wo others were still pending. "While reading a heatwave story, my speech started getting slurred. I tried to complete my presentation. The teleprompter faded away and I blacked out. But luckily, it happened while a 30 to 40 seconds animation was playing out on television. During that time, I collapsed on my chair."
After the incident, Sinha apologised to her channel for the mishap. She also thanked the producers for managing the broadcast after she fainted.
"I never even dreamt that something like this would happen," she said, requesting her social media followers take care of themselves.
Meanwhile, the heatwave in India is surging, especially in Odisha, Jharkhand, and Gangetic West Bengal. In Odisha, highest tempearture to 45.2-degree Celcius has been recorded in Baripada on Saturday.
In West Bengal too, Midnapore and Bankura recorded 44.5 degrees Celsius and 44.6 degrees Celsius, respectively.
With agency inputs.
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