GENEVA: The United Nations said Friday that it was stepping up aid to Pakistan, where monsoon floods have killed 270 people, affected over 5.5 million others and destroyed 1.1 million homes.
The UN's children agency said it would distribute 200,000 litres of water to 40,000 people daily and deploy 40 more water tankers in coming days, in a bid to ensure access to clean drinking water and avert diseases.
Water shortage is a key problem in Pakistan where many are suffering from acute diarrhoea after drinking contaminated water, said a World Health Organization spokesman.
The WHO, which has assessed the health situation in the 22 districts affected by the floods, noted that the supply of clean drinking water had been disrupted in almost all the flood-hit districts.
The provision of purification tablets and chlorine was therefore a must, it noted.
"In addition, tankers... are needed for the supply of clean drinking water to the affected populations," it said.
The UN's food agency meanwhile said it aimed to provide emergency aid to about half a million people by the end of September, and plans to scale up deliveries to reach 2.2 million by October.
It has begun distribution rations to people in the worst-hit districts, starting with Badin, where 82% of the communities have no access to healthcare facilities.
The World Food Programme added that it was currently using stocks within the country to meet the crisis, but that it would need donors to step up in order to replenish the supplies.
Pakistan was hit by the worst floods in its history in 2010, with 21 million people affected. Tens of thousands of people still live in refugee camps, a year after the floods which wrought $10 billion worth of damages.
(Read: Floods — a repeat of last year?)
COMMENTS (7)
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Our govt has enough funds to cope with this disaster, but i dont understand whenever any uncertainity hits our country we always look towards foreign countries for donation..... why cant we use our resouces to full potential to deal with all such uncertainities...... i beleive if our leaders donate fraction of their personal wealth to flood victims, it will be enough to cope with this disaster
My immaturity has been waiting for the day I could point out a typo like this: It's diarrhea not diarrhoea
I wish our elected leader donate only a small fraction of their personal wealth to those poor flood victims !!
Pakistan should alos be made a UN protectorate and UN Peace keeping be imposed in Karachi
pathetic... year after year, international and local donations collected to control this problem are either misused, stored in secret bank accounts, or diverted to making weapons. Then we are back the next year with the same problem and go begging....