Invisible deaths

According to a new report by Amnesty International released on Monday (May 5) titled ‘Uncounted: Invisible deaths of older people and children during climate disasters in Pakistan’, Pakistan’s healthcare and disaster response systems are failing to meet the needs of children and older people who are most at risk of death and disease amid extreme weather events related to climate change. Despite contributing to about 1 per cent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, Pakistan is the fifth most vulnerable country to climate disasters, and increasingly frequent floods and heatwaves are overwhelming its underfunded healthcare system. This has led to many preventable deaths, particularly among vulnerable populations such as young children and the elderly. In its analysis of the 2022 heatwaves and floods, which affected up to 33 million people and displaced an estimated eight million, the report found that the absence of timely evacuation measures and lack of adequate living conditions for the displaced led to many preventable deaths during and after the floods. Recorded deaths among children at one of the hospitals covered by the report increased by 57 per cent in the months after the flooding while overall deaths were 71 per cent higher in September 2022 than the monthly average for the year.

The pattern was similar during the heatwaves and floods of 2024. While the flooding was less intense and the early warning systems had improved, more than 1.5 million people were still affected, many of them having been displaced two years earlier. Again, the affected were evacuated, shelters were often not provided to flood survivors, and virtually no preventive health measures were in place. This led to an encore of the widespread disease seen in 2024. Aside from health infrastructure not being in place where and when it is needed, there is also the issue of existing healthcare infrastructure being overwhelmed, a common theme of the 2022 and 2024 heatwaves. Primary health clinics were not equipped to deal with the upsurge in patients suffering from the heat, and major hospitals were quickly overwhelmed. While cooling centres had been set up, they were too few, and most people interviewed in the report were unaware of them, highlighting gaps in the healthcare system’s public awareness efforts. And even more basic tasks seem to elude the system. According to Amnesty, less than 5.0 per cent of deaths are recorded in any way in Pakistan and the report spoke to dozens of people whose relatives’ deaths could have been credibly caused by extreme heat but were not registered as such. All this means is that the official death tolls of most disasters are likely an undercount.

With the scale and frequency of climate-related disasters only increasing, the country’s ability to protect people during and after them is in need of a major upgrade. This is all the more the case with a potential war looming. The gaps in the emergency response system have to be filled. Early warning systems need to be in place and the state needs to build the capacity to move, house and provide medical aid to large numbers of people on short notice. It is equally as important to ensure that people are actually aware that there are facilities and plans on hand to help them and they need to know what they entail. Our leaders lack the power to change our vulnerability to disaster, but they can ensure that we are in the best shape possible to cope with them.