For eight days at the end of June, the large port city of Karachi in southern Pakistan suffered a torrid heat wave, coupled with unprecedented humidity. Temperatures kept exceeding 40°C, with no respite even at night. "It's like living in an oven," said Ruqqaya Bibi, a working-class resident.

Hospitals were overwhelmed by an influx of patients suffering from sunstroke and severe dehydration. "The patients, in far higher numbers than normal, present with high fevers, restlessness, vomiting and diarrhea," detailed Shaguta Ismail, a nurse at the Dr. Ruth K. M. Pfau Civil Hospital, a public facility in the megalopolis.

In the space of 10 days, at least 49 people died in Karachi due to the heat, according to a report by provincial authorities dated Tuesday, July 2. In reality, the heat wave there probably claimed the lives of several hundred people in only a week. "Our morgues usually see between 25 and 30 bodies arriving every day," said Faisal Edhi, director of the Edhi Foundation, which manages mortuaries and a fleet of ambulances. "Between June 21 and 27, this number soared to 830."

The increase coincided with the peak of the heat wave, which hit many other localities before striking Karachi. At the end of May, temperatures exceeded 52°C in the archaeological city of Mohenjo-daro, a major site of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Inhuman heat waves have also swept across the north of neighboring India. In New Delhi, the thermometer flirted dangerously with 50°C, laying residents low and threatening their lives. Thirty-three election officials died of heatstroke in Uttar Pradesh on June 1. A few days earlier, in the state of Bihar, 14 people died in 24 from the effects of the heat wave. Thousands were hospitalized. "High temperatures have disastrous effects on the body. There is a whole range of heat-related illnesses, sunstroke being the ultimate stage," warned Amlendu Yadav, a professor at New Delhi's Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.

With climate change threatening to increase these episodes of excessive heat, the public facility in India's capital opened a unit in mid-May to treat victims of severe heatstroke. For admitted to the hospital, they are immediately immersed in an ice-filled ceramic bathtub. "Most patients arrive here unconscious, vomiting, convulsing, so we have to do everything we can to bring down their body temperature as quickly as possible and avoid vital organ failure," explained Professor Yadav. The mortality rate from severe sunstroke is 80%, but it can be reduced to 10% with rapid treatment.

You have 57.27% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.