Islamabad, Sept 19, (dpa/GNA) – Nearly half a million children are among hundreds of thousands of people, who have been infected by water-borne diseases in Pakistan’s southern region, after catastrophic floods, official statistics revealed on Monday.
As many as 428,098 children below the age of 5, are suffering from diarrhoea, while another 51,191 are being treated for dysentery in the worst-hit province of Sindh, according to official figures.
More than 2.6 million people including pregnant women have been brought to hospitals, clinics and makeshift health facilities since the worst floods in the history of the South Asian nation began, the statistics showed.
More than 300 deaths have been caused by dengue fever, malaria, cholera, diarrhoea and skin infections, the official data said.
Floods, triggered by heavy monsoon rains since mid-June, have killed 1,545 people, a third of them children, affected more than 33 million people and inundated one-third of the country, or an area equal to the size of Britain.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on the weekend of an impending second disaster in the flood-hit regions, as the number of infections continued to rise, with millions lacking access to clean drinking water, toilets and sanitation.
The warning by WHO Director, General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, came after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called for baby food and blankets as donations.
In the northern region, the number of daily infections was coming down this week, after a peak, said doctor Suhail Farooqi, spokesman for the health department in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
GNA