pakistan | Diseases lurk after the floods

(Johi) A swarm of mosquitoes hovering around him, Aamir Hussain, standing on the roof of his house in southern Pakistan, stares at the fetid waters that, as far as the eye can see, cover the surroundings.

Nearly four months after the start of the monsoon rains that caused the worst flooding in the country’s history, the stagnant water has turned into a pestilential cesspool where malaria, cholera and dengue fever proliferate.

The UN has warned of a “second wave” of deaths from water-borne diseases and malnutrition. Nearly 1,700 people have already died since June in floods and floods, a figure that does not include victims of disease.

As dusk falls over the village of Aamir Hussain, located in Dadu district, Sindh province, the insects appear, threatening his wife and their two children.

“The mosquitoes bite a lot and we get sick,” explains the 25-year-old young man on the roof of his brick shack, where his family takes refuge in the evening to spend the night. Below, their small inner courtyard is completely submerged in putrid mire.

His brother, with whom he shares the premises, has already ventured out of the house to go and have his sick children treated at the hospital. “Some of our mosquito nets have holes in them, so we are worried,” said Mr. Hussain, whose newborn baby fell ill.

Sindh province has been hardest hit by the floods, which Pakistani officials have blamed in part on climate change.

A third of the country was found under water, eight million people were displaced, two million homes destroyed or damaged and 1,500 hospitals and clinics ravaged. Damage is estimated at $28 billion.

Pakistan’s Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said this week that 20 million people were still in need and that their future was very “precarious”. Among them, eight million still require “emergency medical care”.

Rolling eyes

For the sons of Zahida Mallah, it is already too late. In a dismal camp near the city of Hyderabad, south of Dadu, this 35-year-old woman is in mourning.

One of his twins – only two months old – died here the day AFP journalists visited the camp. The other had died two weeks earlier.

They succumbed to “colds” after having to spend their nights outdoors, she said. He wasn’t offered a tent until after they died. “We keep sinking,” she laments.

Not far from there, the town of Johi is surrounded by water and accessible only by boat.

In a decrepit clinic in a camp, the doctor on duty treats Kashaf, an unconscious 7-year-old girl. Probably suffering from malaria, she lies on dirty sheets, medicine placed at her feet.

“Maybe it’s a natural disaster, maybe we’re being tested by God, but no matter what, we’re the victims,” says her 20-year-old father, Dildar Mastoi.

Beneath a black veil, her daughter’s eyes are rolled back. She no longer recognizes her parents. The fever has altered his brain, the doctors say.

Just adults, his parents had to flee the rising waters twice before settling in this camp where they drink water from a well they suspect to have been contaminated by the floods.

“From early evening until dawn, all night long, mosquitoes are everywhere,” says Kashaf’s mother, 19-year-old Bashiran Mastoi. “When the night approaches, we start to worry”.

smoldering disaster

“Life in the camp is absolutely dreadful,” she says, leaning over her bedridden daughter.

Doctor Manzoor Shahani explains that he has seen an upsurge in malaria, intestinal diseases and dengue fever, particularly among “children and pregnant women”.

Even doctors and administrative officials are struggling to take stock of the brewing disaster.

“The degree of devastation is beyond” the response capabilities of the Pakistani government alone, said Faheem Soomro, a provincial health official, as medical staff compiled the list of new patients admitted that day.

Half of the tests for malaria come back positive and most households have a positive case within them. Sindh province has already recorded 208,000 cases this year, compared to 140,000 for the whole of 2021.

If left untreated, the illness that Mr. Soomro describes as “insidious fever” quickly becomes fatal. In a normal year, some 50,000 people die of malaria in Pakistan.

The disease is more easily controlled in the camps – the district of Dadu has 19 – where the luckiest of the displaced crowd under rudimentary canvas tents, aligned in tight rows.

In one of these camps, which hosts nearly 5,000 displaced people, people insistently claim to be treated, under a large tent open to the winds where they undergo examinations to detect malnutrition or malaria, are vaccinated or receive health advice. .

According to Mr. Soomro, many of the people who went through the camps have since returned home to try to rebuild their homes and resume their lives.