Extreme temperatures compound illness in hottest city

By the time Pakistani schoolboy Saeed Ali arrived at hospital in one of the world’s hottest cities, his body was shutting down from heatstroke. The 12-year-old collapsed after walking home from school under the burning sun, his day spent sweltering in a classroom with no fans.

“A rickshaw driver had to carry my son here. He couldn’t even walk,” the boy’s mother Shaheela Jamali said from his bedside.

Jacobabad in Pakistan’s arid Sindh province is in the grip of the latest heatwave to hit South Asia -- peaking at 51 degrees Celsius at the weekend.

Canals in the city — a vital source of irrigation for nearby farms — have run dry, with a smattering of stagnant water barely visible around strewn rubbish. Experts say the searing weather is in line with projections for global warming. The city is on the “front line of climate change”, said its deputy commissioner Abdul Hafeez Siyal. “The overall quality of life here is suffering.”

Most of the one million people in Jacobabad and surrounding villages live in acute poverty, with water shortages and power cuts compromising their ability to beat the heat.

It leaves residents facing desperate dilemmas. Doctors said Saeed was in a critical condition, but his mother — driven by a desire to escape poverty — said he would return to school next week. “We don’t want them to grow up to be labourers,” Jamali said, her son listless and tearful at her side.

Heatstroke — when the body becomes so overheated it can no longer cool itself — can cause symptoms from lightheadedness and nausea to organ swelling, unconsciousness, and even death.

Nurse Bashir Ahmed, who treated Saeed at a new heatstroke clinic run by local NGO Community Development Foundation, said the number of patients arriving in a serious condition was rising.

“Previously, the heat would be at its peak in June and July, but now it’s arriving in May,” Ahmed said.

Labourers forced to toil in the sun are among the most vulnerable. Brick kiln workers ply their trade alongside furnaces that can reach up to 1,000 degrees Celsius.

“The severe heat makes us feel like throwing up sometimes, but if I can’t work, I can’t earn,” said Rasheed Rind, who started on the site as a child. Life in Jacobabad is dominated by attempts to cope with the heat. “It’s like fire burning all around.

What we need the most is electricity and water,” said blacksmith Shafi Mohammad. Power shortages mean only six hours of electricity a day in rural areas and 12 in the city.

Access to drinking water is unreliable and unaffordable due to scarcity across Pakistan and major infrastructure problems. —