Urs concludes: Death toll in Sehwan reaches 74

Sindh CM dismisses need for inquiry into ‘poor’ organisation of event.

HYDERABAD:

Up to 74 people lost their lives during the three-day urs of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan, officials said, blaming the deaths on a combination of factors, including scorching temperatures, lack of both accommodation and clean drinking water, as well as prolonged power outages.

Temperatures ranged between 45 and 47 degrees during the three-day urs which concluded on Thursday.

Additionally, four of these 74 deaths were caused by drowning. Health officials say that 55 or 56 people died during the urs. District Health Officer Dr Shaukat Khaskheli told The Express Tribune that 51 people died by Thursday evening while four or five other casualties were reported later that night. Most of the deceased hailed from Punjab.

“The deceased, included seven or eight men in their teens and twenties,” Edhi Foundation’s regional in charge Muhammad Mairaj told The Express Tribune. He said the rest were aged 50 or above. Dr Khaskheli said that only three to four persons among the deceased were brought to the hospital in a critical condition. Others were dead on arrival.

The deputy commissioner of Jamshoro Suhail Adeeb Bachani said the recurrent breakdown in the electric supply was responsible for the deaths. “The outages disturbed the supply of water and created a suffocating environment,” he said. Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, who performed the closing ceremony for the urs on Thursday evening, was asked if he would initiate an inquiry against the officials responsible for organising the event. “Weather is a natural phenomenon and the heat led to an increase in deaths,” he responded.

Edhi volunteers faced the gruelling task of catering to the sick devotees, collecting the bodies of the deceased and keeping the unidentified bodies for burial, particularly as Sehwan did not have adequate facilities for storage. The bodies of the deceased were stored at the Sehwan taluka hospital’s mortuary, which does not even possess an electric fan, according to Mairaj. The mortuary is able to store four or five bodies at a time.

“Our ambulances kept getting caught in the high volume of traffic. A seven-year-old child who required urgent medical help died in the ambulance en route to the hospital due to the influx of vehicles of devotees here,” Mairaj said.

Edhi volunteers received 20 unidentified bodies, 16 of whom have been buried in a local graveyard. The remains of 51 other deceased were sent to their hometowns in Punjab and Sindh by volunteers. Health officials say seven mobile health teams catered to Sehwan during the urs. Announcements were made via loudspeakers to remind devotees to prevent prolonged exposure to the sun and to stay hydrated.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2014.