Karachi: Deadly Heat Wave in, Pakistan capital Karachi, more than 120 people have died during heavy heatwave last night in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
A reports heath official says, “Most of the deaths have been in Pakistan’s capital city as a result of a devastating heat wave that brought temperatures as high as 113 (deg F) degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend,” Officials reported on Sunday, according to Pakistan Today.
Frequent, deliberate electricity power outages – caused by an increased demand for electricity caused by the extreme weather. Meant to ease the pressure on electric companies in the face of increased electricity power demands – made dealing with the heat more difficult for residents already dealing with a city-wide water shortage.
The head of the emergency department at Jinnah Hospital in Karachi said, “The majority of the victims were elderly.” The number of people killed as a direct result of the heat wave has been hard to determine, as the cause of death for some of the victims being brought to local hospitals has sometimes been uncertain.
“So far, we have received over 90 dead bodies at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre since Saturday night,” said Dr. Seemin Jamali, head of the hospital’s emergency department, told Pakistan Today.
Dr. Seemin added that 10 of the bodies were brought to the hospital Saturday night and that the others arrived Sunday.
“They may have been suffering from different diseases, but most of them died [from] heat stroke or heat exhaustion,” said Jamali.
According to provincial health secretary Saeed Mangnejo told the Agence France-Presse news agency “Since Saturday 114 people have died in Karachi and eight others in three districts of Sindh.”
According to Pakistan’s metrological office, very hot and humid weather is likely to continue on Monday, but cooler weather is forecast from Tuesday.
Summer temperatures in the capital have soared, and officials say it could get worse. According to Pakistan’s Meteorologists office said the high temperatures would continue for another day Monday, but that some areas could expect occasional thundershowers, including over parts of Sindh, the province that includes Karachi.
“Officials thought the heat wave could break the all-time record temperature in Karachi is 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit), recorded in 1979,” according to the Agence France-Presse.
Nearly 1,700 died in a heatwave in neighbouring India last month.
Heat waves around the world are occurring more often and with greater intensity in recent decades, something scientists have said is the result of climate change. “The frequency of hot extremes over land has continued to increase in the last 15 years, despite an apparent stabilization of the global mean temperature,” said the lead author of a study published last year in the journal Nature Climate Change. Other research has shown a dramatic increase in summer heat waves across the globe.
