MISLEADING: Faisal Edhi didn’t claim 427 people died from heatwave in Karachi

The reports of mass deaths from the current heat wave in Karachi have been misleading. There is no credible evidence that 427 people have died from extreme weather.

A clip where Faisal Edhi of Edhi Foundation is saying that his service received 427 dead bodies from Karachi in the last four days is being used on social media to claim that all these deaths were heat-related.

That is MISLEADING: As he says in the clip, the cause of death has to be ascertained by government hospitals. This is an alarmingly high figure for 4 days but unless the cause of these deaths is ascertained, it cannot be said that all these deaths were caused by the ongoing heat wave.

It must be mentioned that ambulance services and government hospitals receive several bodies from the streets and many are of drug addicts or dead due to other reasons.

It was reported in various section of the media that at least 427 people have died over four days in Karachi n due to the lethal heatwaves scorching South Asia this summer.

The nonprofit Edhi Foundation said it received 427 bodies in four days until Tuesday (June 25) in Karachi. Most of them were homeless people and drug addicts living on the streets, the NGO said.

“The extreme heat wave got to them as these people spend their entire day out in the open searching for fixes,” Faisal Edhi, who heads the foundation, was quoted as saying. “We have four mortuaries in Karachi and we have reached a stage where there is no more space to keep bodies.”

Edhi said his foundation received 135 bodies on Tuesday alone and 128 on Monday.

The government Sindh meanwhile reported 23 deaths across three government hospitals on Tuesday. Karachi Commissioner has also denied mass death due to the heat wave.

The Edhi Foundation said many of the bodies they received were from areas “where a lot of load shedding is going on”.

Heat-related deaths are generally highly underreported across the world and could be much higher than the official tallies.