United Nations (UN) has appealed to the international community to enhance funding to Pakistan's flood affected people as devastating floods have affected the livelihood of over 21 million, damaging 1.8 million houses. Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator Valerie Amos stated that the UN has increased the monetary allocations for Pakistan's flood affected people from $27 millions to $37 million.
She said that so far international community has provided $268 million in response to the UN appeal of $460 million for relief and rescue operations from North to South of the country. Amos stated that she has travelled to the heavily flooded Sindh province, where she met some of the 6.9 million people affected by floods and reviewed the on-going relief efforts.
"Everything I saw and heard today confirmed that this disaster-already one of the largest the world has seen-is still getting bigger," said Amos. "The crisis in Sindh province alone is bigger than anything most countries have faced. With 21 million people affected across Pakistan this cannot be treated as just another crisis-it is an immense and still unfolding catastrophe" she remarked.
She said that millions of Pakistan people are living without the basic necessities because their homes and livelihoods have been washed away or damaged by the floods. Stomach aliments are spreading in flood-affected areas and the potential for malaria outbreak and an increase in malnutrition is worrying, she maintained. Moreover, millions of children and pregnant women are especially at risk. In Sindh, over 27,000 square kilometres of the province are still under water; nearly half a million homes have been destroyed.
She said that during her visit to flood-hit Haibat Bund near Ghauspur she met people forced to flee when flood defences failed and spoke with the families living in temporary shelters to determine whether their needs were being met by the relief effort.
According to UN over 4,000 schools in Sindh province have been taken over to shelter for displaced people. Temporary schools like the one at IBA camp are helping keep children's education on track. "The concerns people expressed to me were mostly about problems we can address such as malaria, their children not getting enough to eat, skin diseases and insufficient shelter. People are also worried about their futures -for many of them even when the waters recede, they will have nothing to go back to."
In Sindh province, the United Nations and its partners have so far delivered one-month food rations to 445,000 people, provided essential medication to cover the potential health needs of 656,700 people, and set up 7,786 tents and 3,668 tarpaulins - sufficient shelter for 122,820 people. Every day in Sindh, 115,000 people receive clean drinking water through tanks, hand pumps and water purification tablets.
"The humanitarian community has so much to offer here. We can prevent a lot of needless suffering, but only if our operations on the ground are scaled up properly. I am going to have to ask our supporters to dig deeper as we need a lot more resources," said Amos.