1.04 million families yet to receive any relief

ISLAMABAD: The breaking of a major breach bank of the Indus has led to fresh displacements in Sujawal. The cluster agency has managed to reach 3.3 million affected families, 25 per cent of who are in need of emergency shelter.

Cluster agencies have reached 466,698 households with emergency shelter since early August. The NDMA estimates that 1.9 million houses have been damaged or destroyed and 1.04 million families have yet to receive emergency shelter assistance. Even if the products, tents and plastic sheeting, in the pipeline are included then the total percentage of households covered rises to about 49 per cent of the need which is not enough.

The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) reports that over 136,000 families are currently staying in schools in northern Sindh alone. However, many flood affected families had to leave schools in Sindh which led to a massive increase in the need for shelter. Coverage in Sindh has slightly increased to 6.4 per cent from 6 per cent a week ago, but it remains very low. However, IOM is currently testing a pilot project called “Core Shelter” in Punjab, KPK and Sindh which will help people to permanently rebuild former homes of the affected people by providing them with locally-sourced materials and tools.

As winter approaches and clusters move into the recovery phase, health cluster shows its concern over the increase in the number of diseases. Gul Afridi from WHO said: “Winter will be the biggest challenge as acute respiratory diseases are likely to arise in KP and Punjab. “ She added that there are supplementary medicine boxes given to those on their return which contains antibiotics and other medicines which can help them in prevention of spreading of the disease. However, malaria remains a seasonal threat. “Every year a million malaria cases were reported, this year so far 297,000 have been registered and the figure is likely to increase to 2.2 million in the next six months,” said Afridi.

“Priority is to keep the issue alive, the world must not forget Pakistan’s children” Said Sara Crow from UNICEF. Crow added “Funds are dwindling and the international community needs to scale up.” Crow also highlighted this time as an opportunity where kids get immunised, or go to schools. This is the time to build back better.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2010.