CNN
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Water levels in Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake remain dangerously high despite efforts to drain water and prevent further flooding in nearby towns, officials said.
It’s the latest challenge for officials as the country grapples with the growing disaster, coupled with heavy monsoon rains. melting of glaciers to cover, to cover one third of the country is under water.
The death toll since mid-June reached 1,325 on Monday, with more than 12,000 injured, according to Pakistan’s National Flood Response Coordination Center (NFRCC). And the death toll is expected to rise.
At least 33 million people have been affected by the floods – about 15% of the country’s population, according to government officials and aid agencies.
In some areas, especially in the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, monsoon rains were five times more than normal.
On Sunday, officials tried to release water from Lake Manchar in Sindh province to the nearby districts of Jafarabad and Bubak, home to about 100,000 people, according to Jamal Mangan, Pakistan’s special secretary for irrigation.
They hoped to prevent the lake from overflowing and inundating more populated cities and towns across Sindh, including Mangan, Sehwan, Dadu and Bhan Syedabad.
But provincial irrigation minister Jam Khan Shoro said on Monday that despite their efforts, the water level in the lake remains stubbornly high.
“The water level in Lake Manchar has not gone down,” Shoro told Reuters, declining to say whether there would be another attempt to drain the lake.
Several international aid agencies began arriving in flood-ravaged Pakistan on Monday, delivering much-needed food, clean water and medicine to victims, according to the United Nations. “monsoon on steroids.”
Three million children in Pakistan are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance due to increased risk of water-borne diseases, drowning and malnutrition, UNICEF warned in a statement on Wednesday.
Dr. Deedar Hussain, of Pakistan’s health department, said he feared water-borne diseases would occur if the floodwaters were not removed quickly enough.
“Many patients have come to us. According to our registry, we have received 16,000 patients (from the region). Mostly patients suffer from allergies due to (flooding) water, some also suffer from diarrhea and fever. There are also patients suffering from malaria because we are doing malaria parasite tests on them,” Hussain told Reuters on Saturday.
Aurélie Godet, spokeswoman for Médecins du Monde, told CNN on Thursday that the floodwaters had washed away everything.
“Survivors have to start from scratch. They urgently need decent shelter, affordable food, health and access to basic goods. But this will not end in two months, they need long-term help,” Godet said.
Godet said that children come to their clinics with serious injuries on their feet because they don’t have shoes. And he said some people can’t afford their regular medicine because of price hikes that have made food too expensive even outside the flood zone.
“Survivors in drier areas tell us that one difference for them now is food prices because roads are inaccessible. This is four times the market prices. They have no way to eat,” he said.
Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif It said the August 30 floods were “the worst in the country’s history” and estimated the disaster caused more than $10 billion in damage to infrastructure, homes and farms.
For charity Action Against Hunger27 million people in the country did not have access to enough food before the floods, and now the risk of widespread famine is imminent.
