Pakistan relief offered only 1/3 of what's needed

New Report: Pakistan is a multi-disaster zone; current funding meets only one third of its needs

UNICEF’s new report on the Pakistan floods predicts that the disaster will take years if not decades to put right.

Called Children in Pakistan, the report details how serious things are – in terms of the sheer scale and complexity of the disaster and the potential for malnutrition and diseases like malaria to increase.

It estimates damage in the “tens of billions of dollars.”

Effectively Pakistan is experiencing several disasters simultaneously, the report has found. The floods, which began in late July, continue to advance in some areas, notably the Sindh province, with millions of people waiting for help. Twenty percent of the country is still flooded, over 2000 people have died and a million homes have been destroyed. In other areas, the waters have receded and people are on their way back to their homes or to start planting their fields. The responses needed are very different.

In those flooded areas, the UNICEF report has found that disease is spreading. Reports from health authorities show continuously increasing cases of malaria, acute respiratory infections, skin diseases and acute diarrhoea.

To reduce the spread of malaria, people are in urgent need of preventative medicine and insecticide- treated bed nets (ITNs).

The report also found:

• Children are taking the brunt of the emergency. The worst case scenario is that one hundred thousand children may die as a result from water borne diseases or starvation. Over 10 million children have been hit by the flooding, of which 2.8 million are under-five years old. As a result of the flooding, it is estimated that over 600,000 children are at risk of being malnourished, 126,000 severely.

• Forty percent of households have lost their foodstocks.

For children under five and for pregnant and lactating women, nutrition support is an urgent concern. Child malnutrition is widespread and rates are rising. “We fear a wave of mortality if child nutrition assistance is not scaled up to address the enormity of the problem,” said UNICEF New Zealand’s executive director Dennis McKinlay.

“These children desperately need help. They must be reached, fed and given water, vaccinated against diseases, clothed and given shelter.”

The report has also detailed some positive news about relief work - aid is beginning to get through: UNICEF and its partners are collectively reaching over 6 million people with a combination of safe water supplies and water treatment for families.

This includes water trucking, water treatment plants, repair of wells etc. UNICEF’s individual contribution to these efforts is reaching 2.5 million people with safe water supplies.

Health workers, with major support from UNICEF, have immunized half a million children under-five against polio and more than 420,000 children against measles.

• Key nutrition supplies are reaching over 375,000 children under-five and 50,400 pregnant and lactating women.

• 35,000 children have access to emergency schooling. But some 16,000 schools are affected and 1.8 million children are at risk of being unable to attend school.

Tens of thousands of people are likely to rely on emergency food for some months – if not longer.

The worst-hit are the poor.

“When natural disasters strike, it is always the poorest and the most vulnerable - those least equipped to protect themselves - who suffer most. This is as true in Pakistan as anywhere else in the world. Children are always among the most vulnerable. They should be our first priority,” Mr McKinlay said.

“Not only do we need to sustain our relief efforts through the next few very difficult months, but we need to scale up our efforts to reach more children, especially in the area of nutrition. If we do not, the conditions for those affected will deteriorate. This deterioration could happen very rapidly and could result in a very much worse situation than we have on our hands today.”

With the continually changing nature of the crisis and 20 million people affected, the disaster is both enormous and very complex.

“Despite combined efforts, the immense scale of this disaster means that large numbers of children and women have still not been reached with the assistance they so urgently need.

UNICEF’s revised funding requirement is NZ$ 356 million, and currently has a remaining funding gap of US $213 million.

It will soon have over 400 staff working in Pakistan.

UNICEF believes it needs new donors as well as old, to meet the funding shortfall.

Read the report here.

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