Pakistanis displaced by floods collected wheat flour from the road at a distribution point near the southern coast yesterday. Relief workers say they have reached more than 2 million people. (Asif Hasson/AFP/Getty Images)
Ah, to see beautiful Pakistanis reduced to such indignity!
Maybe another missile would help, huh?
"Floods continue to inundate southern Pakistan; Almost 1 million people displaced since midweek" by Carlotta Gall, New York Times | August 28, 2010
And this after my MSM said the waters would be receding!
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Hundreds of thousands of more Pakistanis fled their homes in the last 48 hours as high flood waters reached the southernmost region of the country and inundated several more districts, the United Nations said yesterday.
Almost 1 million people have been displaced since midweek in Sindh Province, adding to the estimated 6 million already made homeless countrywide over the last three weeks in Pakistan’s worst floods in living memory.
The scale of this is immense and almost beyond imagination.
Waters have forced the evacuation of several areas around the town of Thatta, near the southern coast, and more people farther north where efforts to protect the town of Shahdad Kot have failed, officials said.
Relief workers say they have reached more than 2 million people with emergency assistance, including food, clean water, and medicine, but they acknowledge that the crisis is expanding faster than they can provide help....
More than a half-million people were evacuated from three districts near Thatta, many of them on foot when flood waters breached embankments in two places Thursday afternoon, said Fawad Hussein, a field officer for the UN humanitarian mission in Sindh Province.
Many have taken refuge in Thatta, even though it also remains under threat, and on high ground nearby at a place called Makli.
How much high ground can be left?
Although the Pakistani Army was trying hard to hold the embankments, they warned people to evacuate in the afternoon, but there was not enough transport for them and many had to walk long into the night, Hussein said. “People really struggled,’’ he said, speaking by telephone from the region. “They just could not walk; there were pregnant women and children.’’
Those with transport have moved to the main cities in the region, Karachi and Hyderabad, swelling the camps already set up there, he said.
Health workers setting up clinics in the major centers of displacement reported a sharp increase in cases of acute diarrhea.
Makes a terrible situation nearly unbearable.
Of 3.3 million people treated at clinics and hospitals in the flood-affected areas over the last three weeks, 13 percent — or 430,117 people — had acute diarrhea, said Paul Garwood, spokesman for the World Health Organization in Islamabad....
And it isn't like you can wait in line for the next available port-o-potty!
A high incidence of malaria is also being reported in the southern provinces, Garwood said.
There are no available figures of fatalities among the displaced people, but aid organizations and local news networks have been reporting some deaths in the camps and among the displaced.
Well, that was to be expected during this mess, wasn't it?
--more--"
Pakistan's Epic Flood
Paddling Through Today's Pakistan Flood Coverage
Pakistan Opens the Floodgates For U.S. Troops
Pakistan President Steps Around the Puddles
Taliban Flood Back Into Pakistan
Asia Under Water
Pakistan Floods Wash Away War on Terror
Pakistan's Oasis
