KARACHI: Despite the Met office’s academic conclusion about Karachi’s weather sliding down a notch, a devastating heatwave gripping Sindh for several days has taken a toll of at least 136 people in the province — 132 only in the metropolis. Most of them were pronounced dead at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), officials said on Sunday.They said 85 of the people who had suffered heatstroke were either brought dead or died in JPMC. Thirty people died in the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) on Saturday night and Sunday, nine in Lyari General Hospital and six in the Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK).

“Some 85 people have died since late Saturday night,” Dr Seemin Jamali, joint executive director of JPMC, told Dawn.

Most of them were men aged 50 or more.

“Thirty people were brought dead while another 55, who were in critical condition, died in the hospital during treatment,” Dr Jamali said, adding that severe heat was to blame for all the deaths — the alarming number of deaths has no precedent in the country’s recent history.

“They were brought to the hospital unconscious, suffering from high grade fever with pulse hardly visible and blood pressure barely noticeable,” said the JPMC official.

Many patients told their doctors that they had collapsed suddenly during the sizzling day and suffered extreme breathing problem.

The officials said the first patient of heatstroke was brought to JPMC at around 10pm on Saturday and by the filing of this report the number of such patients almost touched 100.

“The situation is that we are still receiving pati