JUNE 23 (Reuters) — An intense three-day heat wave has killed around 300 people in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, mortuary officials in Karachi said on Monday (June 22).
Authorities were forced to declare a state of emergency after the electricity grid crashed and bodies started to stack up in the morgues.
Temperatures soared to 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) on Saturday (June 20) and hovered at 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) on Sunday (June 21), coinciding with a surge of demand for power as families observed Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daylight hours.
The outages hit large portions of Pakistan’s financial heart of Karachi, home to 20 million people. Residents lit bonfires in protest.
An official from Edhi Welfare Trust, a charitable rescue foundation that has its own mortuary, told Reuters TV the number of heat-related deaths was on the rise.
“We have received a total of 300 bodies of people who died of the intense heat. So far the relatives have taken away 250 bodies. We are urging them to bury the dead bodies as soon as possible, because there is danger of the bodies decomposing. There is also danger of the spread of disease,” said Mohammad Kashif.
Unclaimed bodies were being rapidly buried to create space in the morgues, Anwar Kazmi, a senior official of the charitable Edhi Foundation, told Reuters.
Earlier in the day, Sabir Memon, Sindh province’s additional secretary for health had told Reuters at least 180 people had died of heat-related problems since Friday (June 19). Leave for all medical staff had been cancelled and authorities were distributing extra drips and rehydration salts to hospitals, he said.
Hospital sources said most of those who had died were over 50 years of age, and many deaths had been caused by severe heat strokes.
Saeed Mangnejo, the provincial health secretary, told Reuters that hundreds of patients suffering from the heat wave are being treated at government hospitals.
Residents bringing family members to hospitals complained about the prolonged power cuts during the holy month.
“We have brought our uncle here. He was fasting, and because of the heat, he collapsed. He fasted throughout the day in the intense heat and fell ill,” said Karachi resident Mohammad Ali.
Both the federal government and K-Electric, the private company that supplies Karachi with power, had promised there would be no outages during the time when families gathered to break their fast at sunset. But power cuts left many families without water, air-conditioning, fans and light.
“The electricity situation is such that there is no knowing when the power will come on. It’s obvious that the power will go but no one can tell when it will come back. Everything is going wrong because of the power outages,” said Zobair Ali, another Karachi resident whose father is in intensive care with a heat stroke.
“I just saw a dead body, and when I asked the family what happened, they told me that the father had died because there was no ambulance available. These are the conditions under which we are living,” he added.
Officials from K-Electric said the heat wave had triggered unprecedented demand and that many faults were caused by illegal hook-ups overloading power lines.
Corruption and mismanagement mean most of Pakistan usually suffers at least eight hours of daily power cuts. Those in poorer areas are hit even harder.
The cash-strapped government sells power for less than the cost of production, but its late payments to suppliers cause a chronic shortage. Many wealthy or influential families and factory owners exacerbate the problem by refusing to pay their bills or cutting deals with corrupt power officials.
The army announced that it had set up 22 medical camps for people affected by the heat in the worst-hit areas of Sindh.
