The death toll from a severe heatwave in southern Pakistan is edging towards 800, with the threat of more deaths to come as temperatures remain unseasonably high for the fourth consecutive day, officials have told Al Jazeera.
At least 775 people have died of heatstroke, dehydration or other heat-related illnesses in Karachi, the country’s largest city, since Saturday, according to government figures. “The mortuary is overflowing, they are piling bodies one on top of the other,” said Dr Seemin Jamali, a senior official at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), the city’s largest government hospital.
“We are doing everything that is humanly possible here,” she said, adding that since Saturday, the JPMC had seen more than 5,000 patients with heat-related symptoms. Of those, 384 patients had died, she said. “Until [Tuesday] night, it was unbelievable. We were getting patients coming into the emergency ward every minute,” she said.
Among those who have died, most have been either elderly or poor, officials say. “Mostly people coming here are facing heatstroke and they are old people. Their ages are around 45 to 50 years old, so the older they are, the more serious problems they are facing,” Junaid Ahmad, a volunteer, told Reuters news agency.
