Majority of heatwave victims were ‘homeless’
KARACHI, June 29, (Agencies): Nearly twothirds of the victims of a killer heatwave that swept southern Pakistan last week were homeless people, a minister said Monday, as the death toll in Karachi reached over 1,200.
The city of 20 million inhabitants is a sprawling metropolis with few green areas and has scant facilities for coping with intensely hot weather.
Those living on the city’s streets have little access to shelter or safe drinking water, making them particularly vulnerable to the scorching temperatures.
“About 60 to 65 percent of the heatstroke victims were beggars and heroin addicts, street people,” Jam Mehtab Dahar, the provincial health minister told AFP.
Zafar Ejaz, a senior health official, said the death toll as of Monday stood at 1,229 across the city’s hospitals.
After peaking at around 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) on the weekend of June 20-21, the heat subsided to the mid-30s later in the week as the city’s customary cooling sea breeze returned.
Among the remaining 35 to 40 percent of deaths, elderly women who died in their homes comprised a majority, Dahar said, suggesting power cuts had played a role as people had been unable to use fans or air conditioners.
“The women were at homes and not directly exposed to heat unlike the street people,” Dahar added.
This year’s heatwave has also coincided with the start of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, during which millions of devout Pakistanis abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset.
Under Pakistani law, it is illegal for Muslims to eat or drink in public during daylight hours in Ramadan, though the crisis prompted some clerics to advise people they should stop fasting if their health is at risk.
A devastating weeklong heat wave in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi killed 1,233 people, an official said.
Nazar Mohammad Bozdar, operations director at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, said about 65,000 heatstroke patients were treated by doctors at all of Karachi’s hospitals since June 20 when the heat wave struck Sindh province, where Karachi is the provincial capital.
He told The Associated Press that 1,923 patients with heat-related ailments were still being treated.
“The government quickly responded by making arrangements for the treatment of heatstroke patients and the situation has improved now,” he said.
Pakistan’s deadliest heat wave on record coincided with the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, when Pakistan’s Muslim majority observed a dawn-to-dusk fast.
The temperatures in Karachi came down to 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit) after reaching 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) a week ago amid chronic power outages, which forced many residents to spend nights outdoors.
The heat wave shocked many Pakistanis just weeks after soaring temperatures caused nearly 2,200 deaths in neighboring India.
Since then, it has raised fears that South Asia could be seeing some of the devastating effects of human-caused climate change.
On Saturday, TV footage showed a charity burying several unidentified bodies of people who died earlier this week because of the heatstroke. Pakistani television stations reported that several unidentified bodies were buried by the Edhi Foundation charity because local morgues were overflowing.