The subcontinent's deadly heatwave has killed at least 450 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi over the last four days alone, a leading non-profit of the South Asian country said on Wednesday (June 26). The Edhi foundation said it received at least 427 bodies in the last four days excluding Wednesday while the Sindh government had on Tuesday released 23 bodies in three government hospitals.
Karachi is Pakistan's port city in the Sindh province and is the largest city in the crises-ridden nation. The soaring mercury crossed 40 degrees Celsius for the third consecutive day on Wednesday (June 26). Such temperatures are too high for a coastal areas.
"We have four mortuaries operating in Karachi and we have reached a stage where there is no more space to keep more bodies in our mortuaries," Faisal Edhi, who heads the Foundation, said.
Edhi Trust is the largest welfare foundation in Pakistan and provides various free or subsidised services to the poor, homeless, orphan street children, discarded babies and battered women.
"The sad fact is that many of these bodies have come from areas where a lot of load shedding is going on even in this harshest weather," he said.
Most of the bodies belonged to homeless people and drug addicts, Edhi foundation said.
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"The extreme heat wave got to them as these people spend their entire day out in the open searching for fixes," he said only to add: "But only the government hospitals or where they were initially taken to can tell you the real cause of death."
On Tuesday (June 25) itself, the non-profit had received 135 bodies at their morgues and 128 on Monday (June 24).
The Pakistani citizens in Karachi and the rest of the country also suffer from long hours of the load shedding in many areas. Karachi Electric, the electricity provider for Karachi city claimed that power cuts are happening in the city as the Sindh government still has to clear the dues of Rs 10 billion.
As Karachi braved another very hot and humid day on Wednesday, nine more bodies were found in different parts of the city, bringing the death toll to 29 over the past three days, hospitals and rescue services said.
They added that none of the bodies bore any injury marks.
The Edhi and Chhipa charities said that its volunteers recovered four and five bodies, respectively, from different parts of the city on Tuesday.
Keeping in view the rising number of bodies and deaths reported by city morgues and major hospitals, Sindh Home Minister Zia Lanjar announced that an inquiry was being conducted to ascertain the cause of such deaths.
In a statement issued on Tuesday evening, he said that if the inquiry found power loadshedding in sweltering heat as one of the reasons behind those deaths then the K-Electric would be held responsible and murder cases would be registered against its management.
The Sindh health department confirmed one death due to heatstroke at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC).
City sizzles at 41.3°C
According to the Met Office, the maximum temperature recorded in the city on Tuesday was 41.3 degrees centigrade with 63 per cent relative humidity.
In its daily advisory, the Met department stated that monsoon currents from the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal were likely to penetrate Sindh from Wednesday (today) and a low pressure also lay over south of Indian Gujarat.
“Under the influence of this weather system, rain wind/thundershower with isolated heavy fall is expected in Karachi, Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Shaheed Benazirabad, Naushahro Feroze, Khairpur, Dadu, Sukkur, Jacobabad, Kashmore, Larkana, Mithi, Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Tando Allahyar, Badin, Thatta from June 26 to July 1 with occasional gaps,” it said.
Cases of heat-related illness on the rise
Dr Nausheen Rauf, the head of the emergency section at the JPMC, said the overall number of patients reporting at the emergency department remained high on the second consecutive day on Tuesday.
“Patients are reporting with complaints of high fever, weakness, gastroenteritis, vomiting and diarrhoea in numbers that aren’t normally seen. Today, 886 patients have reported to us so far in 12 hours,” she said.
Sharing the 24-hour data of Monday, Dr Rauf said a total of 1,592 patients, including 22 cases of heatstroke, reported at the emergency section.
“Normally, 1,200 to 1,300 patients report at our emergency unit and the number of brought dead cases on an average ranges between 10 and 15 on a single day. Hence, there was an overall increase in the number of patients as well as brought dead cases, particularly, on June 24,” Dr Rauf explained.
At the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi, Dr Imran Sarwar G. Sheikh said 65 patients reported either with heatstroke or heat-related illnesses at the hospital and were discharged. There was no mortality.
A spokesperson of the Indus Hospital said that the 24-hour data of June 25 would be available on Wednesday.
The 24-hour data of June 24 of the hospital showed that 704 patients reported at the emergency department, including eight heatstroke patients. One of them had died.
