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Pakistan flood aid gets to families in remote areas – 27 Aug 2010
This week food, plastic sheets for shelter, hygiene kits and cooking utensils were among the items distributed to another 500 families in the Kashmore district of Sindh.
It’s nearly a month since the monsoon rains brought devastation to Pakistan, affecting around 20 million people and claiming the lives of 1,600 others.
Lost everything
As the flood waters have moved from the north to the south, Sindh province has increasingly been deluged. Ashraf Mall, Tearfund’s Country Representative for Pakistan, said, ‘There’s been no let-up in the flooding situation. More and more areas are being flooded.’
So far Tearfund partner SSEWA-Pak has provided aid to more than 8,000 families in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province and is currently working in Sindh to help people who in many cases have lost everything.
In the village of Saiful-Mirani in upper Sindh, a man called Gulab told how his house was virtually destroyed and his family only just managed to escape injury: ‘I have nothing left at all,’ he said, adding that they had received no outside help.
Solomon Khurrum from SSEWA-Pak, speaking from what looked like a vast lake, said, ‘There used to be a nice village here where people cultivated their lands but now there’s nothing left; no medical help has been provided to the people who are affected and no food either.’
Illness spreading
One elderly villager said, ‘Our crops were destroyed by the floods. We have nothing, we have lost the wheat which we had – what will our children eat now? This is the third day our children are hungry, we don’t have anything to eat or drink.’ Waterborne illnesses are adding to the suffering. Diarrhoea, gastroenteritis, rashes and other skin complaints are increasingly evident as the flooding affects access to clean water and disrupts sanitation. A team from SSEWA-Pak are working with Unicef to address the needs of children affected by the floods.
- €107 could pay for a food package for four families for 30 days
- €53 could pay for a health & hygiene kit to protect 10 families from disease
- €21 could pay for eating utensils for 4 families so they can cook for themselves
- More about:
Pakistan, Emergencies -
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