UN ramps up flood aid appeal for Pakistan
Rehman says despite contributing less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Pakistan is facing the crisis because of climate-induced flooding
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is out of money to spend on recovery from devastating floods, its climate change minister said on Tuesday, urging prompt international help at the UN launch of an aid appeal as funds needed by the country were ramped up five-fold.
The United Nations revised up its humanitarian aid appeal for Pakistan five-fold to $816 million from $160 million, as a surge of water-borne diseases and fear of growing hunger pose new dangers ater weeks of unprecedented flooding linked to climate warming.
The meeting was told that the UN has received only $90 million so far out of the $160-million previous appeal for aid.
“We have no space to give our economy a stimulus package, which would create jobs, and provide people with the sustainable incomes they need,” the climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, told the conference in Geneva aimed at seeking aid for Pakistan.
She urged the developed world to accelerate funding for the ongoing domestic climatelinked disaster, terming it “the meta-climate event of a century.”
Pakistan has already dispersed cash handouts worth $264 million to 2.47 million people affected by the disaster, she added.
She said 7.9 million people have been displaced. “We are gathered here to reboot your compassion simply because the numbers are too staggering to service for any one country alone,” she said.
The European Union (EU) scaled up its flood assistance to 30 million euros (PKR6.7 billion), according to a statement ater the EU commissioner for crises management, Janez Lenar i , met Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif in Islamabad.
Pakistan’s economic affairs minister Ayaz Sadiq told the gathering that it would take “years and years” for the country to rebuild and help rehabilitate millions of people whose homes were destroyed by the flooding.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, told the meeting Pakistan needed an urgent and robust response, supported by sustainable funding, to control the spread of outbreaks.
“We are on the verge of a public health disaster,” he said and added: “The water has stopped rising, but the danger has not.”
He said the WHO needed $115 million to meet the health emergency.
The floods, caused by abnormal monsoon rains and glacial melt, have submerged huge swathes of the South Asian country and killed nearly 1,700 people, most of them women and children.
Climate Minister Sherry Rehman on Tuesday urged the world community to help Pakistan tackle the unprecedented devastation caused by floods.”don’t leave us alone,” she said.
Rehman said despite contributing less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Pakistan was facing the crisis because of climate-induced flooding.
Also on Tuesday, the United Nations’ report said the heavy monsoon rain and a combination of river, urban and flash flooding led to an unprecedented climate-induced agricultural and infrastructure destruction in Pakistan.
“Rain-induced landslides and floods have also damaged agricultural land and forests, impacting local ecosystems,” the UN report said.
The report said the disaster put at risk the education of more than 12 million school-aged children in the food-hit districts in Pakistan, where the deluges damaged at least 25,187 schools.
Alarmed by a surge in disease, the United Nations is asking for five times’ more international aid ater deadly floods in Pakistan let millions of survivors homeless and at rising risk of waterborne diseases and other ailments.the UN on Tuesday raised its request to $816 million from $160 million, saying recent assessments pointed to the urgent need for long-term help lasting into next year.
The request in Geneva came a day ater Julien Harneis, the UN coordinator for Pakistan, said diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, scabies and malnutrition are fueling a “second wave of death and destruction,” with children and women in its path.
Floods in impoverished Pakistan have affected 33 million people and killed at least 1,696 since mid-june.
Pakistan says the record-breaking floods have caused at least $30 billion in damages.
The disaster displaced 7.9 million people. Of them, half a million are still living in tents and makeshit homes.
Doctors in Pakistan are trying to contain the outbreak of waterborne and other diseases which have caused nearly 350 deaths in flood-affected areas since July.
On Tuesday, Harneis said that the UN is issuing the revised appeal to meet the urgent needs of the flood victims. “We need all of these funds and we need them quickly,” he said
Harneissaidaninternationalsupportconference will be held later this year to seek more funding for rehabilitation and reconstruction in flood-hit areas, where deluges have wreaked havoc.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) in recent weeks has repeatedly warned about a “second disaster” in the wake of the deadly floods in Pakistan, where thousands of doctors and medical workers on the ground are batling outbreaks of waterborne and other diseases in flood-hit areas and hospitals are overwhelmed.
WHO Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said about 10% of all of Pakistan’s health facilities were damaged in the floods, leaving millions without access to health care.
“We must all work together to support the people of Pakistan — we need an integrated approach that puts less emphasis on the work of each agency, and more on the needs of people,” he said, adding that “the water has stopped rising, but the danger has not” and “we are on the verge of a public health disaster.”
He said more than 2,000 women in floodhit areas were giving birth every day, most in unsafe conditions.
Floodwaters have receded up to 78% in Pakistan’s worst-hit southern Sindh provinces, but displaced people are still living in tents and makeshit camps.
They have increasingly been suffering from gastrointestinal infections, dengue fever and malaria, which are on the rise.
The number of dengue fever cases keeps increasing in Pakistan amid an outbreak due to floods triggered by heavy monsoon rain in the South Asian country.
The southern Sindh province reported 311 new infections, said the provincial health department on Monday evening. The worst-hit area was Karachi, the provincial capital, which reported 255 new cases.
With the newly reported dengue cases, the October figure to date for the province has risen to 652, bringing the total local tally to 10,806 this year, Xinhua news agency reported.