Dr Hussein A. Gezairy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, has appealed to the international community to double its response effort to the floods hitting parts of Pakistan. Dr Gezairy called for preventive measures to be undertaken to halt the outbreak of infectious and waterborne diseases among nearly 20 million flood-affected people, suffering from severe illness, hunger and loss of shelter and property.
credit: © Abdul Majeed Goraya/IRIN
The Regional Director is expected to make a field visit to Pakistan to assess the situation and follow up on the relief work and health services being provided by WHO, in collaboration with other UN agencies and humanitarian organisations in flood-stricken provinces.
He pointed out that in previous floods, many deaths among victims had not resulted from drowning or directly from the disaster, but rather from the terrible situation following the floods, particularly the acute shortage of food and potable water, disease outbreaks such as cholera and typhoid, deteriorating healthcare services, insufficient numbers of health personnel and increasing mortality among children as a result of measles and polio.
Dr Gezairy added that there had been nearly 1,600 deaths, in addition to tens of thousands of people inflicted with diarrhea, malaria, skin diseases, respiratory and eye infections, reptile bites and insect stings.
He said that the disaster in Pakistan was an example of the perils of man-made climate change of which WHO and environmental activists have been warning. He noted that victims of the Pakistani flood outnumbered the total number of victims of the 2004 Tsunami, the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti combined.
It is expected that this phenomenon will increase globally with tens of millions of people vulnerable to malaria, hunger and water shortages over the next decades.
“To reduce the risks [of climate change] greenhouse gas emissions have to be reduced which requires a reversal of global bad practices contributing to the problem,” said Dr Gezairy.