- Title: PAKISTAN: U.N. urgently appeals for more funds to help Pakistan's flood-hit areas
- Date: 18th August 2010
- Summary: LAYYAH, PUNJAB, PAKISTAN (AUGUST 17, 2010) (REUTERS) CHIDREN PLAYING/BATHING IN FILTHY FLOOD WATER
- Embargoed: 2nd September 2010 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Pakistan
- Country: Pakistan
- Topics: International Relations,Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
- Reuters ID: LVA7BDVDBTVMIPSXA2QWURJEGYSN
- Story Text: Only a small fraction of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water have received any help as the United Nations battled donor fatigue and appealed urgently on Tuesday (August 17) for more funds.
With hundreds of villages marooned and highways and bridges cut in half by swollen rivers, food rations and access to clean water have only been provided to around 500,000 flood survivors, the U.N. said.
The United Nations has warned that up to 3.5 million children could be in danger of contracting deadly diseases carried through contaminated water and insects in a crisis that has disrupted the lives of at least a tenth of Pakistan's 170 million people.
"We have a country which has endemic watery diarrhea, endemic cholera, endemic upper respiratory infections and we have the conditions for much much expanded problems in all these areas," UNICEF Regional Director for South Asia, Daniel Toole, told a news conference in Islamabad.
"We have women and children at risk, not in the hundreds of thousands, but in the millions. Women and children are more vulnerable, they are susceptible to infection and they are living in dreadful conditions," Toole said.
Up to 1,600 people have been killed and two million made homeless in Pakistan's worst floods in decades.
The United Nations has reported the first case of cholera, but only a third of the $459 million aid needed for initial relief has arrived.
U.N. spokesman Maurizio Giuliano told Reuters only a limited proportion of food and water needs have been met and one of the major reasons for this was funding.
The damage and cost of recovery could shave more than one percentage point off economic growth, analysts say.
Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, said the cost of rebuilding could be more than $10 to $15 billion.
Toole said no one had understood the magnitude of the damage caused by the floods.
"Its growing every day. So, in some ways, even though the flood is in a rapid onset, this is a slowly-expanding onset. And I don't think that anyone understood how large this is going to become once the flood waters travel the entire length of Pakistan," Toole said.
The World Bank will release $900 million to help fund relief efforts. Funds will come through reprogramming of planned projects and reallocation of undisbursed funds, but it did not say how it would be used to aid victims.
Public anger has grown in the two weeks of floods, highlighting potential political troubles for President Asif Ali Zardari's unpopular government which is a major U.S. ally in the war against Islamist militancy. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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