Individuals affected by Pakistan’s floods obtain medicines at a medical camp.Credit score: Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty
With greater than a one-third of Pakistan affected by flooding, thousands and thousands of individuals are in want of meals, shelter and medical care. Researchers, together with the federal government, worldwide assist companies and native organizations are racing to supply help forward of extra rain predicted this month.
Nature spoke with Sajid Soofi and Zahid Memon, who research ladies’s and kids’s well being at Aga Khan College, in Karachi, about how college staff have pivoted to supply much-needed medical assist, and the challenges they face with greater than 30 million individuals displaced throughout the nation.
What sort of aid work is your college doing?
SS: As a result of we’re a tutorial establishment with one of many main hospitals in Pakistan, the Aga Khan College Hospital, our main response to the floods has been to supply medical care, with a selected concentrate on pregnant ladies and kids. The college has mobilized a couple of thousand workers members, college students and volunteers within the aid effort.
ZM: We’re coordinating with the federal government to supply medical care to greater than 24,000 individuals in additional than 80 health-care camps and cellular items throughout a number of districts within the southern coastal provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, which have been affected by the floods and the place there are displaced populations. Earlier than the flooding, our medical employees would go to well being services and accumulate details about provides — however they’re now consulting with sufferers and prescribing medicines. And workers members who had been beforehand concerned in neighborhood mobilization at the moment are supporting medical personnel by establishing camps, dishing out remedy and counselling individuals.
The work shouldn’t be unfamiliar to us. We deployed groups to answer the key flooding in 2010 and the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that hit Pakistan in 2005. However the scale and severity of the catastrophe this time are a lot bigger than now we have seen earlier than. The intensive flooding has already created enormous issues in accessing flood-affected areas, particularly as a result of many highways are underwater.
What are the principle challenges?
SS: One main difficulty is caring for pregnant ladies and newborns. Of the 32 million individuals displaced by the floods, it’s estimated that some 650,000 are pregnant, and greater than 70,000 are anticipated to ship their infants this month. It is a enormous quantity, however the well being services in flood-affected districts can not operate as they need to. We plan to arrange maternal and new child kits that embrace clear supply sheets, blankets, disinfectants and sunflower therapeutic massage oil.
As a result of entry to wash water is restricted, we try to supply chlorine tablets for purifying water and oral rehydration salts for treating diarrhoea, particularly in kids. Such heavy rains may also stimulate mosquito replica, which can gas outbreaks of malaria and dengue.
One other downside is malnutrition. We have already got a really excessive prevalence of malnutrition in ladies, particularly throughout being pregnant, and a few 40% of kids within the province of Sindh — a closely affected area — are stunted, which implies they aren’t as tall as they need to be for his or her age. The meals insecurity attributable to these floods will additional exacerbate malnutrition. We try to supply semi-solid meals dietary supplements for additional energy, particularly for pregnant ladies and kids.
We hope to proceed operating intensive well being camps for about one month, after which will concentrate on a smaller variety of districts for one more two months. We’re hiring workers to work on the aid efforts, and hope to return to our regular analysis actions inside a few weeks.
How have the floods affected your analysis?
SS: Our analysis primarily focuses on maternal, new child and kids’s well being. We additionally research vaccine-preventable ailments, polio and reproductive well being, together with household planning.
ZM: A few of our analysis has continued regardless of the flooding. For instance, we’re nonetheless amassing information on well being methods to search for patterns in using current services and their capability. Going ahead, we hope to make use of this information to evaluate the influence of the floods on these companies, and what was uncared for. Reproductive-health and family-planning interventions are beneficial throughout flood disasters, so we’re prioritizing these actions wherever attainable.
However a lot of our work is performed in rural and distant districts which are among the many worst hit by the floods. Nearly all the districts we work in have been affected. We are able to’t go to villages that at the moment are underwater to conduct surveys, and we are able to’t ask members about our interventions at a time when they’re underneath misery. Nonetheless, as a result of our workers members are already in these hard-to-reach districts, now we have enlisted them within the aid effort, and our places of work are getting used as warehouses for storing medicines and provides.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
