Tuesday 3 August 2010

Two girls in Swat, Pakistan, who have been affected by the flooding, eat food from a plastic bag.

We’ve been delivering medical assistance and shelter to families in the region for four days. Tomorrow we will start to deliver World Food Programme food to more than 2,000 children and their families.

However many roads are still submerged and 90% of bridges in the region have been swept away. Save the Children’s mobile health teams have been using donkeys, boats and hiking many kilometres to deliver critically needed medicine to more than 1,400 children and their families in the region. 

Families are getting desperate as their food runs out. There have already been skirmishes over food when it reached Nowshera, a district which was totally submerged by the rains.

“Families are stranded and desperate for food,” Matt Wingate, Save the Children UK’s Emergency Response leader said. “There are 40,000 children in the region, many of whom are already going hungry. We’re delivering aid as fast as we can but are hampered by the conditions. When aid does get to them the atmosphere can be very tense. There is a critical need to get more clean water, food and medical assistance to thousands of children and their families in the next few days.”

Children are always the most vulnerable in disasters like these. Matt Wingate says, “Children are particularly susceptible to diseases like cholera, malaria, dengue and respiratory infections if they do not get sufficient food. We’re already seeing outbreaks of all of these diseases and we’re very worried there could be an epidemic of cholera any day now.”

We’ve begun to distribute shelter kits, including tarpaulins and ropes to 800 families, as the heaviest monsoon rains in 90 years batter large areas of the country, with more rainfall forecast over the next two weeks.

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