The World Vision Pakistan has decided to intensify its flood response activities to assist nearly six million Pakistani people affected by severe flooding in 22 of the 23 districts of Sindh as well as areas of Punjab.
The situation in Sindh province has drastically deteriorated. The focus of this intensified response will be on health, nutrition and distribution of commodities to flood survivors, particularly pregnant women, children and elderly people. According to UN estimates, monsoon rains have so far affected over 5.4 million people (49 percent women) or some 1 million households of which 56,000 (five percent) are headed by females.
“In Badin, Sindh’s worst-hit district, this year’s flooding is even worse than last year’s,” said World Vision Pakistan National Director Alexander Davey. “In the last month alone, the number of flood-affected people has more than doubled. A quick, well-coordinated relief effort is urgently needed to reach children and their families who have lost everything. World Vision is seriously concerned about the well-being of children and pregnant and sick women,” he added.
It is estimated that about half of the 5.4 million people suffering as a result of floods are living in just two of Sindh’s 23 districts, Badin and Khairpur – where World Vision is working with communities to respond to their most pressing needs. World Vision has been helping, through partners, in the southern areas of Sindh, but heavy rains have wreaked havoc throughout the province including in the northern areas, where World Vision has been assisting since last year’s flooding.
As of today, nearly six million people have been affected by the floods. When World Vision began responding three weeks ago, the number of people affected was a third of what it is now. Nearly half a million people have been displaced into camps, half of them children, and the numbers are rising daily. Many more remain stranded in villages that are now islands or on the sides of roads without shelter.
“Many in Sindh were already living in extreme poverty, but now people are being forced to squat on roadsides, without a roof over their head or any means of putting food in their mouths. Entire communities have been cut off from the outside world,” Davey said. “Mile after mile, people are lined up along the roadsides, children wandering around lost, without shoes, and the cattle people have managed to save are wasting away.”
Recent World Vision assessments put child malnutrition at emergency levels in Sindh, even before this most recent bout of flooding. With families unable to harvest swamped crops once again, children are in desperate need of nutritious food to help them survive this second disaster. Last year, in response to the devastating floods that swept the length of Pakistan covering an area the size of the UK, World Vision extended its operations from the north of the country and was one of the first aid agencies to reach many of Sindh’s cut-off communities.
World Vision assisted 1.5 million people affected by last year’s floods, providing food, shelter, healthcare, long-term livelihood assistance, and other interventions to people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Punjab and Sindh. In Sindh, World Vision set up 14 therapeutic feeding centres, but now with the new rains and hundreds of children arriving daily, these centres are stepping up emergency operations.
