Pakistan heatwave kills more than 200 in Karachi as electricity grid crashes
Karachi is worst hit as temperatures soar to 45 degrees Celsius, with power outages making it harder for residents to cope with heatwave.
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 23 June, 2015, 1:13am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 23 June, 2015, 1:13am
Agence France-Presse in Karachi
Rescue workers move the bodies of the victims of heatwave at a mortuary in Karachi. Photo: EPA
More than 200 people have died in a heatwave in southern Pakistan, officials said yesterday, as the government called in the army to help tackle widespread heatstroke in Karachi.
The death toll in Karachi, the country's largest city, where temperatures hit 45 degrees Celsius at the weekend, is at least 202 with more deaths being reported - although not confirmed - in other parts of the country.
"The death toll from the heatwave has crossed the figure of 200 in Karachi as we have confirmed casualties of 140 in Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and 62 from Civil Hospital Karachi," the provincial health minister Jam Mehtab Dehar said.
He said the true figure could be much higher, as the toll excluded other hospitals and deaths yet to be recorded elsewhere. Doctors say most of those who have died succumbed to heatstroke.
National Disaster Management (NDMA) spokesman Ahmed Kamal said the government had asked the army and paramilitary Rangers to help relief efforts which would include setting up heatstroke treatment centres around the city.
Coping with the scorching heat has been made harder by the power cuts that are a daily feature of life in Pakistan.
The Sindh provincial government has imposed a state of emergency at all hospitals, cancelling leave for doctors and other medical staff and increasing stocks of medical supplies.
Another 11 deaths were reported yesterday in the southern part of Punjab province.
"Eleven people have so far died because of heat-related diseases in South Punjab during the last 48 hours," a health official in the city of Multan said.
The Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, during which devout Muslims abstain from all food and drink during daylight hours, began on Friday, coinciding with what is usually the hottest time of the year in Pakistan.
Sher Shah, a veteran medical practitioner and former president of the Pakistan Medical Association, said Karachi's poor were most at risk.
In Karachi, a city of 20 million people, electricity shortages crippled the water supply system, hampering the pumping of millions of gallons of water to consumers, the state-run water utility said.
Pakistan's Met Office said temperatures hit 43 degrees in Karachi on Sunday and 49 degrees in the southwestern city of Turbat. More hot and humid weather was predicted today, though thunderstorms forecast for later in the week could bring cooler weather.
India's brutal heatwave last month led to at least 2,005 deaths, mostly in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Hundreds die at the height of summer every year in India, but this year's toll was the second-highest in the country's history.
