KARACHI: While it has been more than six months since catastrophic flooding caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains hit Pakistan, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is seeing alarmingly high numbers of people with malaria and malnutrition among flood-affected communities.
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In a statement released the other day, the MSF said that ensuring adequate food, water, sanitation, health care and shelter must be a priority for the international and national response to the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan as many people in affected areas have immediate, urgent needs that cannot wait.
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Edward Taylor, MSF’s Emergency Coordinator in northern Sindh and eastern Balochistan said “since the start of our activities in these regions, we have screened a total of 28,313 children for malnutrition in our mobile medical clinics. Of those screened, 23% (6,489) had severe acute malnutrition and 31% (8,738) had moderate acute malnutrition, comprising more than half of the children who arrived at our clinics.”
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He said “we are months into this response and our teams in Sindh and eastern Balochistan still see people living in tents and makeshift shelters. In these winter months,” people are becoming more vulnerable. “In December our medical teams continued to see high rates of malaria, acute malnutrition, and skin infections. Humanitarian organisations and agencies involved in the response must not forget that the situation remains critical.”
He further said that in the areas where MSF teams were working, water HAD yet to recede, and the emergency medical and humanitarian needED remain high. “People urgently need access to food assistance, safe drinking water, healthcare and shelter. We are still very much in an emergency phase,” he said, adding that “so far, we have provided basic medical care to more than 92,000 people, mainly for skin diseases, malaria, respiratory tract infections, and diarrhoea.”
Those returning to their villages are finding destroyed houses and land, still surrounded by stagnant water. The devastating loss of homes and belongings impacts people’s mental health, as well as their livelihoods.
Meanwhile, those remaining in camps and informal shelters are faced with the encroaching threat of winter. MSF continues to tailor its distribution of non-food items for the season with additional blankets for winter and in the past two weeks, 6,000 households have received these relief packages.
In Sindh and eastern Balochistan, many people whose villages are now accessible found that water sources are still contaminated and they must get drinking water from far away. Crops and food stores have been destroyed, livestock has died, and fields will not be ready for the next planting season, increasing the risk of further food insecurity.
MSF teams are continuing to provide safe drinking water to rural communities, with more than 20 million litres provided so far. The teams have also helped to distribute 15,973 hygiene kits to families of remote flood-affected areas.
