ll four of Haliman’s daughters have fallen sick after she left her flood-ravaged house in her village in Qambar Shahdadkot district in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Two of her daughters have a recurring fever and two have skin diseases.
“I have never seen such diseases. The skin on my eldest daughter’s feet is peeling off,” said Haliman, sitting on a charpoy in a girls’ college in Larkana, where she had sought refuge along with a hundred others. “It is because of the floods and she waded through the flood water with me for hours. It is not only her feet, but her back, thighs and neck have bumpy rashes.”
Devastating floods in Pakistan triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed more than 1,500 people, including 528 children, and affected about 16 million children, according to Unicef. Authorities say the waters that have washed away homes, roads, crops, livestocks and people will take at least three to six months to recede.
Floods have also brought water-borne diseases. “Millions of people are living under the open sky,” the Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, told the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, last week. “Water is giving rise to the water-borne diseases.” He has urged the world to focus on the impact on children.
Haliman said her daughters are suffering. “The skin diseases are getting worse and the fever of my daughters is also not going down. I am not getting any reasonable treatment here.”
At least 3.4 million girls and boys remain in need of immediate, lifesaving support. Unicef Pakistan’s representative, Abdullah Fadil, warned that without a massive increase in support, many more children would die. “The situation for Pakistani families is beyond bleak, and malnourished children are battling diarrhoea and malaria, dengue fever, and many are suffering from painful skin conditions,” he said.
Rawat Khan, 47, holding her daughter Iqra, whose ear became discoloured and blemished with small, pus-filled spots, said these diseases were not common before but now all the children were getting sick. Her son’s chest was swollen too.
“The doctors are asking us to get tests done in Karachi … but we cannot afford that. We don’t have money. We lost our houses and savings in the floods,” she said.
“We only saved our lives. We could save nothing else. We are helpless to see our children falling sick and we are unable to do anything about it. The government has failed us.”
Zeeshan Chandio, who comes from an affected village in Sindh province, held his son Nadeem in his arms. “I too want help and I don’t know what’s wrong with my son. His stomach is not well and belly is swollen.”
Dr Faiq Ali, who arranged a medical camp in Warah, a village in Qambar Shahdadkot, one of the most affected districts in Sindh province, said he saw more than 300 children on Sunday and all had various conditions such as malaria, diarrhoea and skin diseases.
''I hope they will be safe'' ''Heart to heart don't give up''.