In Pakistan’s flood, a half-million pregnant women are among most vulnerable victims

By Margie Mason, The Associated Press
Posted: 09/12/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT MUZAFFARGARH, Pakistan — Sughra Ramzan knew something was wrong when strange pains began ripping through her stomach for the second time. The pregnant mother feared her baby was in trouble — but there was nothing she could do. It was dark, and she was stranded with no way to reach a doctor from her village, still floating in thigh-high murky water from last month’s massive floods. She desperately needed a boat to ferry her through even deeper water to reach the road, but nothing was available until morning. All she could do was wait and pray. “I felt there was something very wrong,” she said. “I was scared about what would happen.” Like Ramzan, tens of thousands of expectant moms were marooned by floods that have swallowed an area of Pakistan larger than Florida. About 18 million people have been affected, 70 percent of them women and children, in the country’s worst natural disaster. The World Health Organization estimates a half-million Pakistani women hit by the floods will give birth over the next six months, and about 32,000 of them will experience complications. Many were malnourished and anemic before the disaster due to a lack of protein and iron in their diets. Now, with so many going hungry and facing diseases ranging from diarrhea to malaria, they and their newborns are among the most vulnerable. “It is getting worse day by day. They are suffering extremely, extremely miserable conditions,” said Zahifa Khan, who runs the 14-person Pakistan Human Development Foundation, an organization in the central city of Multan that helps pregnant women and babies left homeless by the floods. “They have no camps, and they are sitting under open sky.” …