According to government data and UNICEF on Friday, children and women are becoming increasingly susceptible as tens of thousands of people in flood-stricken Pakistan suffer from infectious and water-borne diseases and the number of fatalities has topped 1,500.
The southern Sindh provincial administration stated in a report on Friday that the areas have become infected with ailments including as malaria, dengue fever, diarrhoea, and skin disorders as flood waters begin to subside, which officials predict may take two to six months.
Speaking during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif claimed that stagnant water was the cause of water-borne illnesses. “Millions of people are residing outside.”
In the province, which has been the hardest devastated by the catastrophic floods, more than 90,000 individuals were treated on Thursday alone, according to the Sindh report.
In addition to the 17,977 instances of diarrhoea and the 20,064 cases of skin diseases recorded on Thursday, it confirmed 588 cases of malaria and had another 10,604 probable cases. Since July 1, around 2.3 million people have received care in the flooded area’s field and mobile hospitals.
Tens of thousands of people have visited improvised medical facilities in flood-devastated areas in three additional Pakistani provinces, according to officials, who also noted acute respiratory issues, scabies, eye infections, and typhoid.
A citizen of the northwest named Ali Haider told the journalists over the phone that “they don’t have specialists and medicines.”
A government report in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of northwest Pakistan acknowledged the complaints and stated that it was still difficult to get supplies and medications.
Noor Ahmad Qazi, director of general health services in the southwest Balochistan province, told the media, “We’re concerned about the spread of malaria. In the province, a health emergency has been proclaimed, he said.
In Pakistan, a country of 220 million people, record monsoon rains in the south and southwest and glacier melt in the north caused the floods that has affected close to 33 million people, destroyed homes, crops, bridges, highways, and livestock, and cost an estimated $30 billion in damage.
The country’s GDP growth will drop from the expected objective of 5% stated in the budget when it narrowly avoided defaulting on its debt in a balance of payment crisis to about 3% as a result of the losses.
When the floods came, Pakistan was already experiencing severe economic setbacks; its current account deficit had widened and its foreign reserves had dwindled to only one month’s worth of imports.
The economy has not yet responded favourably to Islamabad restarting an IMF programme that had been stalled since early this year. Inflation in Pakistan has reached 27%, and the rupee has been falling.
There is an urgent need for food, housing, clean drinking water, sanitation, and medicine for hundreds of thousands of displaced people. A lot of people have been sleeping in the open next to elevated roadways.
“I’ve spent the last two days in flood-affected communities. The stories I heard portray a picture of extreme desperation, and the situation for families is beyond hopeless “UNICEF’s representative in Pakistan, Abdullah Fadil, made the statement in a statement.
We all witness undernourished kids battling dengue fever, malaria, and diarrhoea. Many of them also have terrible skin disorders.
Many of the women, he noted, are themselves anaemic and undernourished, making it impossible for them to breastfeed tired or unwell newborns who are underweight. According to Fadil, millions of households have nothing more than rags to shield themselves from the hot heat in places where the temperature can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
According to the UNHCR, at least 3.4 million girls and boys still require immediate access to life-saving assistance, and an estimated 16 million children have been impacted.
Scientists stated on Thursday that the torrential monsoon that inundated vast swaths of Pakistan was a once-in-a-century event that was probably made more violent by climate change.
Through July and August, the nation received 391 mm (15.4 inches) of rain, or almost 190% more than the 30-year normal. This was the result of an early monsoon that lasted longer than usual. Sindh, a province in southern Pakistan, experienced 466% more rainfall than usual.
