The UN refugee agency is pitching tents and building toilets for the families hosting an estimated 2 million people uprooted by an offensive against the Taliban. About 200,000 are sheltering in displacement camps and the rest have sought refuge in other villages and regions. Doctors are treating people for disease, infection and mental disorders, and fear the monsoon season may bring more illness.
"Many local families have seen their households double or triple overnight," UN agency spokesman Ron Redmond said on Friday. "The longer that situation goes on, the more difficult it becomes for ... the people who are hosting them to maintain the same generosity." About 5,000 "family tents" to shelter up to 50,000 people were distributed this week in the Mardan and Swabi districts of the NWFP, he said.
"You are going to start seeing these tents being erected in the gardens of houses throughout those districts where families are hosting displaced people," Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is based.
It is also providing hygiene kits and latrines to households, he said, as well as repairing village water pumps and improving sanitation facilities in mosques, which have also been helping to house and care for the uprooted. Crowded host villages could also face the threat of disease as a result of low vaccination coverage and unhygienic conditions, the World Health Organisation told the briefing.
WHO spokesman Paul Garwood said that uprooted people without proper shelter also could face added risks during the monsoon season from water-borne diseases such as dysentery. About 30,000 of those displaced by conflict are estimated to have severe mental disorders as a result of the stress they have undergone, and this number could double as the fighting stretches on, Garwood said.
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