AID ORGANISATIONS OPERATING in Pakistan are warning of a second wave of deaths as a result of the country’s extensive flooding.

The threat of waterborne diseases continues to rise as millions of displaces people live in makeshift camps without adequate clean water and sanitation.

Floods which have devastated the country for five weeks have receded in parts of north and central Pakistan, but are continuing in the south and are expected to remain for several weeks.

Triple threat

The World Food Programme says that Pakistanis are facing a triple threat: hunger, homelessness and desperation.

“People have lost seeds, crops and their incomes, leaving them vulnerable to hunger, homelessness and desperation – the situation is extremely critical, the head of the programme,” Josette Sheeran, said today.

Unicef says that the disaster has affected some 8.6m children already, and warns that children are particularly vulnerable to diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea.

The UN’s children’s fund also said that crops covering a 4.25m acre area have been destroyed or damaged, leaving people vulnerable to malnutrition.

Oxfam’s director in Pakistan, Neva Khan, said that reconstruction has to start even though people are still being evacuated from their homes:

One month into a crisis we would expected the situation to have stabilised and the long term planning to have begun. But we are still in phase one of an increasing catastrophe, evacuating people, providing them with shelter, trying to get clean water and sanitation to those people who need it.

Pakistan doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for the emergency phase to be over before starting the reconstruction.

Counting the cost of the crisis

Pakistan’s prime minister warned today that the country’s economic growth will drop by two full percentage points because of the floods and lead to “massive” job losses. Addressing his cabinet on a live televised broadcast, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said:

This is a pensive moment in our history. There will be massive job losses, serious social implications and a snowball effect on manufacturing and services.

Gilani said that inflation could double to 20%. He added that 4,000km of roads and 1,000 bridges had been destroyed in the disaster, which would seriously affect the cost of delivering goods.

The UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg arrived in southern Pakistan today, and visited aid camps near Sukkur, one of the worst affected regions.

Clegg praised aid efforts made to date, but said that more donations were needed and warned that the disaster would have serious repurcussions:

I think the sheer scale of this, it is really quite difficult to comprehend. The terrible thing is that it has got a long tail. It has got a lot of aftershocks that are going to last for a long time.

Clegg met with President Asif Ali Zardari to discuss the flooding, and also spoke to him about his recent trip to Afghanistan where he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Pakistan: in photos