Days of scorching heat have disrupted daily life in Pakistan, particularly in the country’s largest city, Karachi, where doctors treated thousands of patients with heatstroke in various hospitals, health officials said on Tuesday.
Local media said several people in the city were left unconscious, several of whom later died.
Temperatures in Sindh rose to 117 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, and authorities in the provincial capital, Karachi, urged people to stay indoors, stay hydrated and avoid unnecessary travel.
Forecasters predict that the heatwave that began in May will subside next week.
More than 20 people also died in Karachi after days of heatwaves, local media reported, but a government spokesman could not confirm the number of deaths from heatstroke.
Faisal Edhi, head of the Edhi Foundation, which runs the country’s largest ambulance service, said on Tuesday that it had received dozens of bodies of heatstroke victims in Karachi the previous day.
Imran Sarwar Sheikh, head of the emergency department at Karachi’s National Civil Hospital, told The Associated Press that he had treated 120 patients with heatstroke in the previous day, eight of whom later died.
More than 1,500 patients with heatstroke were treated in other hospitals in the city on Monday, local media said.
Sardar Sarfaraz, chief meteorologist in Karachi, said temperatures would continue to rise across Pakistan this week. “It is dry today. In such conditions temperatures will start rising,” Sarfaraz said.
Pakistan’s climate is warming much faster than the global average and could increase by 2.3 to 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2090s compared to the 1986-2005 baseline, according to the World Bank’s Panel of Climate Change Experts.
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One of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, the country also faces the risk of heavy monsoon rains as huge glaciers in the north melt due to rising temperatures. Warmer air can hold more moisture, making the monsoons stronger.
This year’s monsoon season will begin in July and cause flash floods, according to a statement from Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority. The agency’s warning comes less than two weeks after a senior UN official said an estimated 200,000 people in Pakistan could be affected by the upcoming monsoon season.
But officials say this year’s rainfall will not be as severe as in 2022, when devastating floods killed 1,739 people, damaged two million homes and at one point left a third of the country under water.
The 2022 floods have caused more than $30 billion in damages to Pakistan’s already cash-strapped economy.
Pakistan says it is bearing the brunt of the global climate disaster despite contributing less than 1% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
The extreme heat in recent months has had a major impact on agriculture, damaging crops and reducing yields, as well as on education, leading to extended school holidays and school closures in several countries, affecting thousands of students.
Climate experts say extreme heat events are becoming more common in South Asia during the pre-monsoon season. Climate change has now caused extreme temperatures in the region to rise by about 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to studies, and Pakistan has seen above-normal rainfall and heat this year.
Farook is a contributor to The Associated Press.
