65 people died in the heat wave in Pakistan

Power cuts and fasting during Ramadan make many Pakistanis unable to withstand prolonged hot weather.

"65 people have died in the heat of the last three days," Reuters quoted Faisal Edhi, who runs the Edhi Foundation, to store corpses in the morgue and provide ambulance services at the city. Karachi, southern Pakistan.

A child covered with a towel to avoid the sun in the stifling weather in the city of Karachi on 21/5.(Photo: Reuters).

Edhi said most of the dead were taken to the morgue, factory workers from low-income areas in Karachi, Landhi and Korangi . "They work around the generators and boilers in the textile factory, and there are 8-9 hours of power outages in those areas," he said.

According to Edhi, doctors in the area said they died of heat shock. However, the Director of the Provincial Department of Health Sindh Fazlullah Pechuho told Dawn that no one died for that reason.

"Only doctors and hospitals can decide whether the cause of death is heat shock. I firmly oppose the conclusion that Karachi people die because," Pechuho said.

The rotating outage causes serious consequences for the heatwave, especially when it coincides with the holy month of Ramadan , the time most Muslims are fasting during the day. The temperature on May 21 has reached 44 degrees Celsius and is expected to stay above 40 degrees Celsius until May 24, local media reported. The number of deaths may increase as high heat levels remain.

A Karachi resident hid a towel to protect himself from the sun.(Photo: Reuters).

Reports of the number of deaths due to heat shock in Karachi raised concerns about the same risk of recurring disasters as the 2015 heatwave. At that time, at least 1,300 elderly people and patients died from the sun. too hot, causing the morgues and hospitals to overload.

That same year, the morgue of the Edhi Foundation ran out of storage after 650 bodies were brought in for a few days, leaving the medic to leave decaying corpses amid the oppressive heat.

The Sindh provincial government assured the people that the situation in 2015 will not repeat and is trying to act so that people in need of care are treated quickly.