ISLAMABAD, 28 June 2005 — More than a week of scorching heat has left about 175 people dead in Pakistan, many of them in the country’s eastern Punjab province, officials said,
Since the heat wave began more than a week ago, 120 people have died in Punjab, said a Health Ministry official in the province’s capital of Lahore.
Sunstroke, dehydration and food poisoning have caused most of the deaths, he said.
However, some areas have had relief from the blistering temperatures, the official said yesterday.
“There have been lot of cases of heat-stroke and dehydration reported from the 6,000 hospitals and health units we have in the province,” a Punjab health official said.
Health officials in the southern province of Sindh said there had been about 10 deaths over the past 24 hours taking the province’s toll of fatalities due to the heat to about 55.
The highest temperature recorded during the heat wave was in Jacobabad in Sindh, which saw the mercury hit 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 Fahrenheit) last Friday, an official said.
A weather official said temperatures had eased in about a third of the area hit by the heat wave but the high temperatures would persist elsewhere for at least another two days.
June and July are traditionally Pakistan’s hottest months before seasonal rains cools things off a bit before the mild autumn.
In the neighboring countries of India and Bangladesh, a heat wave has left over 500 dead in the past two months.
The official said monsoon rains likely later this week are expected to break the hot spell in various heat affected parts of the country.
Hot weather in Afghanistan had melted snow across the Hindu Kush Mountains, swelling rivers there and in northwest Pakistan where about 300 families have been forced from their homes by floods, a military official said.
The army has been helping victims of the floods caused by the Kabul and Swat rivers bursting their banks.
