INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A mother holds her child during a heatwave in Karachi
(Reuters)Islamabad: A heatwave has killed 65 people in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi over the past three
days, a social welfare organisation said on Tuesday, amid fears the death toll could climb as the high temperatures persist.The heatwave has
coincided with power outages and the holy month of Ramadan, when most Muslims do not eat or drink during daylight hours
Temperatures hit 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) on Monday, local media reported.Faisal Edhi, who runs the Edhi Foundation that operates
morgues and an ambulance service in Pakistan's biggest city, said the deaths occurred mostly in the poor areas of Karachi."Sixty-five people
have died over the last three days," Edhi told Reuters
"We have the bodies in our cold storage facilities and their neighbourhood doctors have said they died of heat-stroke."A government
spokesperson could not be reached for comment.But Sindh province's Health Secretary Fazlullah Pechuho told the English-language Dawn
newspaper that no one has died from heat-stroke."Only doctors and hospitals can decide whether the cause of death was heat-stroke or not
I categorically reject that people have died due to heat-stroke in Karachi," Pechuho was quoted as saying.Nonetheless, reports of heat
stroke deaths in Karachi will stir unease amid fears of a repeat of a heatwave in of 2015, when morgues and hospitals were overwhelmed and
at least 1,300 mostly elderly and sick people died from the searing heat.In 2015, the Edhi morgue ran out of freezer space after about 650
bodies were brought in the space of a few days
Ambulances left decaying corpses outside in sweltering heat.The provincial government has assured residents that there would be no repeat of
2015 and was working on ensuring those in need of care receive rapid treatment.Edhi said most of the dead brought to the morgue were working
class factory workers who came from the low-income Landhi and Korangi areas of Karachi."They work around heaters and boilers in textile
factories and there is eight to nine hours of (scheduled power outages) in these areas," he said.Temperatures are expected to stay above 40C
until Thursday, local media reported.© Thomson Reuters 2018(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by
TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
