KARACHI // Nearly 700 people have died from a three-day heatwave in southern Pakistan, officials said on Tuesday, as medics battled to treat victims after a state of emergency was declared in hospitals.
The majority of the deaths occurred in the city of Karachi, Pakistan’s economic hub of around 20 million people, where temperatures reached 45ºC at the weekend.
“The number of people who have died in the heatwave has now reached 692,” said Saeed Mangnejo, a senior provincial health official, adding that the toll may rise futher.
The deaths came as the overwhelmingly Muslim country of around 200 million people observes Ramadan.
Tahir Ashrafi, a prominent Islamic cleric, urged those who were at risk of heat stroke to abstain from fasting.
“We [religious scholars] have highlighted on various television channels that those who are at risk, especially in Karachi where there is a very serious situation, should abstain from fasting,” he said.
“Islam has drawn conditions for fasting, it is even mentioned in the holy Quran that patients and travellers who are not able to bear fasting can delay it and people who are weak or old and are at risk of falling sick or even dying because of fasting should abstain.”
Semi Jamali, a doctor at Karachi’s largest hospital said they had treated about 3,000 patients.
“More than 200 of them were either received dead or died in hospital,” he added.
Pakistan’s largest charity, Edhi Welfare Organisation, said their two morgues in the city had received more than 400 corpses in the past three days, and had reached capacity.
Seven more people were also killed in Punjab during the past 24 hours, officials said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, electricity shortages have crippled the water supply system in Karachi, hampering the pumping of millions of gallons of water to consumers.
Pakistan’s Meteorological Office said temperatures remained at around 44.5ºC in Karachi on Tuesday but forecast thunderstorms for the evening.
“Due to a low depression developing in the Arabian Sea, thunderstorms will likely begin this evening and might continue for the next three days,” a meteorological official said.
The provincial government announced a public holiday to encourage residents to stay inside. Many of the dead have been labourers who work outdoors.
Some residents also took to hosing each other down with water on Tuesday to avoid collapsing from heat stroke.
An official from the National Disaster Management Authority said that heat stroke treatment centres would be established at all hospitals across the province to provide “emergency medicines for heat stroke victims”.
The deaths come a month after neighbouring India suffered a deadly heatwave, with more than 2,000 deaths.
Hundreds of mainly poor people die at the height of summer every year in India, but this year’s toll was the second highest in the country’s history.
* Agence France-Presse