Wave of disease plagues, PakistanUN warns deaths from water-borne diseases, malnutrition will outstrip 1,700 drowned, electrocuted in initial cascade
His head haloed by a whirlwind of mosquitoes, Aamir Hussain stands on the roof of his home in southern Pakistan surveying the fetid floodwaters all around. Four months after the start of record monsoon rains linked to climate change, the standing water has curdled into a pestilent soup breeding malaria, cholera and dengue. Wave of disease plagues, The UN has warned of a “second wave” of catastrophe, with the risk that deaths from water-borne disease and malnutrition will outstrip the 1,700 drowned and electrocuted in the initial cascade. As dusk arrives in Hussain’s submerged village in Dadu district of Sindh province, so do the bugs, and the gamble that they will infect his wife and two children. Wave of disease plagues, “The mosquitoes bite a lot and we fall sick,” said the 25-year-old, atop a brickwork compound framing a courtyard awash with putrid, sucking mud. His brother, who shares this home, has already ventured off the roof to treat his sick children at hospital with borrowed cash.
“Some of our nets are torn now so we are worried,” said Hussain, whose infant son has fallen ill.Sindh has been worst-hit by the catastrophic flooding which put a third of Pakistan underwater, displaced eight million, destroyed or damaged two million homes, crippled 1,500 hospitals and clinics and caused an estimated $28 billion in damages. Climate change minister Sherry Rehman said this week that more than 20 million people are still in need “with futures that are entirely precarious”. Eight million of those require “urgent medical services”, she said. Zahida Mallah has already been tipped over the edge. In a bleak camp south of Dadu, outside the city of Hyderabad, the 35 year-old explained she is in mourning for her twin two-month-old sons. One died on the day AFP visited, the other around two weeks ago at a separate camp. They were killed by “colds”, she said, after sleeping out in the open. She was offered a tent only after it was too late.
Source: This news is originally published by tribune