100,000 kids without food in Pakistan floods face death
By MARGIE MASON (AP)
20 September 2010 SUKKUR, Pakistan — Suhani Bunglani fans flies away from her two baby girls as one sleeps motionless while the other stares without blinking at the roof of their tent, her empty belly bulging beneath a green flowered shirt. Their newborn sister already died on the ground inside this steamy shelter at just 4 days old, after the family’s escape from violent floods that drowned a huge swath of Pakistan. Now the girls, ages 1 and 2, are slowly starving, with shriveled arms and legs as fragile as twigs. More than 100,000 children left homeless by Pakistan’s floods are in danger of dying because they simply do not have enough to eat, according to UNICEF. Children already weak from living on too little food in poor rural areas before the floods are fighting to stay alive, as diarrhea, respiratory diseases and malaria attack their emaciated bodies. Doctors roaming the 100-degree (38-degree Celsius) camp that reeks of urine and animal manure have warned Bunglani three times to take her children to the hospital, or they will die. The mother says she knows they need help, but she cannot leave the tent without her husband’s consent. She must stay until he returns, even if it means risking her daughters’ lives. “I am waiting for my husband,” she says, still fanning flies from the sweating babies. “He is coming.”
The floodwaters that began swamping a section of Pakistan larger than Florida six weeks ago continue to inundate new areas, forcing even more people to flee. At least 18 million have already been affected, and nearly half of them are homeless. Many have been herded into crude, crowded camps or left to fend for themselves along roads. But doctors warn the real catastrophe is moving much slower than the murky water. About 105,000 kids younger than 5 are at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition over the next six months, UNICEF estimates. “You’re seeing children who were probably very close to the brink of being malnourished, and the emergency has just pushed them over the edge,” says Erin Boyd, a UNICEF emergency nutritionist working in southern Pakistan. “There’s just not the capacity to treat this level of severe acute malnutrition.” The U.N.’s World Food Program alone has fed more than 4 million people since the crisis began, distributing monthly rations that include nutrition-packed foods for children. But the sheer geographic and human scale of the disaster is overwhelming, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called it the worst he has ever seen. Even now, after the water has receded in many areas, some families who refused to abandon their villages remain marooned on islands cut off from all transport. The lucky ones sprint and dive for supplies dropped by choppers hovering above. But not everyone is being reached. … Post-flood data are lacking, but the World Health Organization says about 30 percent to 35 percent of children in Pakistan had stunted growth before the calamity, a sign of chronic malnutrition. Farming families have now been flushed from their homes, losing the vital crops and livestock that were sustaining them in one of the country’s poorest areas. …
Kids without food in Pakistan floods face death
AFP
September 20, 2010 – 9:24PM An unemployed father-of-four who lost his home in Pakistan’s devastating floods has died after setting fire to himself outside the prime minister’s home, officials says. Muhammad Akram, 30, doused his body in petrol and lit himself with a match after being denied entry to Yousuf Raza Gilani’s private residence in the central city of Multan at the weekend, police said on Monday. “We tried to save his life but he could not survive because his condition was serious,” Multan’s main Nishtar Hospital doctor Zafar Niazi told AFP. “He tried to commit suicide yesterday. Police took him to hospital and registered a case against him for attempted suicide, but he expired today,” senior police official Mehmoodul Hasan told AFP on Monday. Police and relative Abdul Sami said Akram lost his house in the massive flooding last month and that his family is living in the open without a tent. Relatives said Akram had to care for four children, a wife and two ageing parents at Jeewan Wala village, some 150 kilometres west of Multan, and lost his job as a factory watchman last May. …
