UK aid: Pakistan floods, one year on

UK aid helped millions of people, initially by providing emergency shelter, food, healthcare, water and sanitation. PHOTO: VICKI FRANCIS/DFID

It is one year since Pakistan was hit by one of the largest natural disasters the world has ever seen. A staggering 14 million people were forced to flee their homes when ten years’ worth of rain fell in one week.

Thousands of schools were destroyed, and agriculture was wiped out across vast areas of the country.

In response, UK aid helped by providing emergency shelter, food, healthcare, water and sanitation. Later it helped people to rebuild their lives and become self-sufficient again by constructing flood resistant brick homes, replacing bridges and schools, and providing seeds, livestock, jobs and tools.

“Britain is immensely heartened to have been able to change the lives of people affected by the floods, and to now see families living in flood-resistant houses that we’ve helped to build, children in schools we’ve repaired, and people harvesting crops from seeds that we gave them,” said International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell.

In addition to the UK government funding, the DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee) appeal raised a further £71 million thanks to the generosity of the British people.

Facts and stats

UK aid has provided:

• Shelter to more than one million people, including 13,400 flood resistant brick houses, each big enough to house a family of up to eight people.
• Wheat and vegetable seeds, fertiliser, animal feed and veterinary services to approx 895,000 people.
• 200,000 children with education by repairing schools, as well as accelerating a project to build forty new schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa benefitting another 9,000 boys and girls.
• Help for some 744,000 people in rural areas to earn a living by providing jobs and skills training.
• Healthcare for around 2.62 million people.
• 5,000 families with kitchen gardens to increase the availability of vegetables and fruit.
• Clean water to around 2.4 million people.
• Toilets and sanitation to some 1.2 million people
• Heath and hygiene education to around 2.5 million people on how to avoid potentially fatal diseases.
• Emergency food for one month for more than 630,000 people.
• Nutritional support for nearly half a million malnourished young children and pregnant/breastfeeding women, and nine nutrition stabilisation centres to provide treatment to malnourished children.
• Pots and pans, blankets and other items to approximately 2.74 million people.
• Ten new bridges shipped over from the UK to replace some of those destroyed by the floods in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, re-opening vital transport links.
• Twelve planes (five Royal Air Force and seven civilian) that flew in packed full of emergency aid.
• Help to reduce the risk of another disaster ahead of the 2011 monsoon, by helping to set up and equip, via the Red Cross, 12 Disaster Management Cells in villages at risk of flooding across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh.