Plea to help Pakistan’s homeless families

Homeless families in north Pakistan urgently need basic health care, services and safety assurances, international aid organisations have said today. About two million people have fled their homes and thousands children been split from their families, in the rush to escape fighting between the army and militants. Now hundreds of thousands of people are living in refugee camps, which are overflowing. But these figures are the tip of the iceberg – more than 80 per cent of displaced people are relying on the hospitality of local villages and families which are bursting at the seams and struggling to provide basic water, power schools and health services. Some communities have doubled or even tripled in size.

It is a disastrous situation not just for the families who fled their homes but also for communities struggling to support them, said Louis Georges Arsenault, head of global emergencies of the United Nations children's fund. School buildings are being used to house people with nowhere else to go and almost 4,000 schools have become camps, according to BBC reports. And that figure is increasing by about 200 schools a week. The international community is failing to deliver the needed funds, Eric Laroche, the World Health Organization's assistant director-general, said today. So far, money delivered and pledges from donor nations covered only 27 percent of the £22.4m ($37m) needed, he said. That lack of funding makes it a challenge to meeting the refugees' basic health needs, particularly if more funds do not arrive soon. "Within two to three weeks we won't have any more essential drugs to be treating the people in the camps," Laroche said. "It is not normal, and I don't even find it acceptable."

Laroche, who visited a camp sheltering 31,000 people on Monday, said the conditions were generally "not bad" but warned that the coming rainy season, which usually runs from July through late August, raises the threat of an outbreak of infectious diseases. He noted that "many of the camps are in areas that are likely to be flooded," and that an intense rainy season would likely bring "diseases such as acute diarrhoea that is going to create a lot of malnutrition, cholera, malaria _ so we need to be prepared for that." In some cases, Mr Larouche said: "there are 50 people living in one room, men sleeping outside, so all the conditions for an epidemic are gathered here."

Pakistans government’ has urged people to return home; reassuring them that it is safe. And some people have returned but many say they are still not convinced the fighting is over. Unicef has asked the government to give people formal written guarantees of safety. And pressure is growing, Mr Arsenault said, as monsoon rains and the planting season are both about to start. "If they [the displaced people] are not able to go back for the agriculture season they are going to miss the year and that is a critical factor," he said.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children