Climate crisis claims hidden victims: young migrant workers return home with kidney failure from gulf’s extreme heat

In the dialysis wards of Kathmandu, Nepal, a devastating pattern is emerging that reveals one of climate change’s most overlooked casualties. Young men who traveled to Gulf countries seeking better economic opportunities are returning home with irreversible kidney failure, victims of extreme heat, grueling labor conditions, and inadequate worker protections.

Surendra Tamang was just 22 when he left Nepal for construction work in Qatar, hoping to build a better future for his family. For six years, he endured 12-hour shifts assembling scaffolding in temperatures reaching 122°F (50°C). By age 30, his kidneys had failed completely. Now he spends 12 hours weekly tethered to a dialysis machine, unable to work and dependent on treatment for survival. His story mirrors that of countless other migrant workers across the Gulf region.

Recent research reveals the shocking scope of this crisis: at Nepal’s National Kidney Center, over 20% of the 138 patients admitted in the past six months had worked in Gulf countries. These men develop chronic kidney disease an average of 17 years earlier than workers who never migrated. The cause is work-related heat stress—prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures combined with physical labor gradually destroys kidney function, often without obvious symptoms until it’s too late.

This hidden epidemic extends beyond individual tragedy to expose a system of environmental injustice. The same Gulf nations profiting from fossil fuel extraction use that wealth to fund massive construction projects, employing millions of vulnerable workers from South Asia who bear the health consequences of the climate crisis they didn’t create. As global temperatures rise and the Persian Gulf heats up twice as fast as the global average, experts warn this preventable crisis will only worsen without immediate action to protect the world’s most exposed workers.