GENEVA: A day after opening an air bridge to transport aid to victims, the UN issued a warning on Tuesday that the humanitarian situation in flood-devastated Pakistan was likely to deteriorate.
Flooding in Pakistan has impacted more than 33 million people as a result of historic monsoon rainfall intensified by climate change. At least 1,300 people have died as a result of the flooding, which has also destroyed bridges, roads, and businesses.
More than 1,460 health facilities, 432 of which were completely destroyed, according to the UN’s World Health Organization.
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The WHO and its partners have established more than 4,500 medical camps and distributed more than 230,000 quick tests for acute watery diarrhoea, malaria, dengue, hepatitis, and chikungunya.
Along with COVID-19, HIV, and polio, these diseases are already present in Pakistan, and according to WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic, “all these are now at risk of getting worse.”
In particular in the most severely hit areas, “we have already received reports of an increasing number of cases of acute watery diarrhoea, typhoid, measles, and malaria.”
A third of the country — an area the size of the United Kingdom — has been drowned by the floods, according to Jasarevic, and access to those places is still difficult.
Due to service interruptions, newborn infant mortality and severe acute malnutrition risk rising. Jasarevic forewarned that things might get worse.
