According to a prominent South Asian non-profit, the deadly heatwave affecting the Indian subcontinent has killed at least 450 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi in just the previous four days. This information was released on Wednesday, June 26. The Sindh government had released 23 remains in three government hospitals on Tuesday, while the Edhi foundation claimed to have received at least 427 bodies in the last four days, excluding Wednesday.
The largest city in the crisis-ridden country of Pakistan is Karachi, which serves as its port and is located in the Sindh province. On Wednesday, June 26, the sky broke 40 degrees Celsius for the third day in a row. Such high temperatures are inappropriate for coastal regions.
The head of the Foundation, Faisal Edhi, stated, “We have four mortuaries operating in Karachi and we have reached a stage where there is no more space to keep more bodies in our mortuaries.”
The largest charity foundation in Pakistan, Edhi Trust offers a range of free or heavily discounted services to the underprivileged, including street children, abandoned infants, battered mothers, and the homeless.
“The sad fact is that many of these bodies have come from areas where a lot of load shedding is going on even in this harshest weather,” he stated.
According to the Edhi Foundation, the majority of the bodies belonged to drug addicts and homeless persons.
“The extreme heat wave got to them as these people spend their entire day out in the open searching for fixes,” he stated with the following clarification: “But only the government hospitals or where they were initially taken to can tell you the real cause of death.”
The nonprofit received 135 dead at their morgues on Tuesday, June 25, and 128 on Monday, June 24.
In many places, the long hours of load shedding also affect Pakistani nationals in Karachi and the rest of the nation. Power outages, according to Karachi Electric, the city’s electrical supplier, are occurring because the Sindh government has not yet paid its outstanding debt of Rs. 10 billion.