PAKISTANI HEAT WAVE MIGHT PASS EBOLA'S DEATH TOLLS

RAPID DEHYDRATION IN PAKISTAN

About 65,000 heatstroke patients treated in Karachi hospitals during heatwave, with nearly 2,000 still being treated.

Pakistan's politicians have faced severe criticism for not alerting the public about the dangers of a sudden heat wave. Local citizens have stepped up to fill in the gap where government services were unavailable.

Jibran Nasir, a lawyer and social activist who has been raising funds to provide air conditioners and water to hospitals, is outraged. "Not a single public service message was sent out by the government regarding this heat wave,. "If Sameer's now-dead children would have made it to the largest government-run hospital in the city, they would still not have survived because of the dismal lack of facilities to deal with an illness as basic as a heatstroke."

The Meteorological department has forecast a chance of rain in the coming days. But while temperatures have started to drop, no rainfall can rebuild a family broken apart by the simple ravages of heat, poor planning and a lack of basic necessities.

The death toll from the severe heatwave in southern Pakistan over the past week has climbed to 1,233, despite cooler temperatures bringing some relief to residents, officials said.
In Karachi, Pakistan's economic centre of around 20 million people, the temperature only reached 34C on Saturday, after touching 45C at the peak of the heatwave last week.
Nazar Mohammad Bozdar, operations director at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, said on Saturday that 65,000 heatstroke patients were treated at the city's hospitals since June 20.
Bozdar told the AP news agency that 1,923 patients with heat-related ailments are still being treated.
The victims of the heatwave have died of heat stroke, dehydration or other heat-related illnesses - with the elderly and poor the worst- affected groups.

At the height of the crisis last week, Dr Seemin Jamali, a senior official at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), Karachi's largest government hospital, told said that the centre's mortuary was "overflowing".
"They are piling bodies one on top of the other," Jamali said at the time.
The heatwave struck Karachi at a time when the city's Muslim majority was observing the dawn-to-dusk fasting month of Ramadan, further worsening the situation.

The situation is getting beyond control since it is a natural disaster.

Sunday, June 28, 2015