By Mike Bailey, World Vision Advocacy Manager, August 24, 2010

“What does it smell like there”? I asked Sarmad Iqbal, my World Vision colleague in Pakistan’s Sindh province.   

“When you get close to where the people who have been displaced are living the smell cannot be described”, he said. “My throat was burning, my eyes were itching and I wanted to vomit. The stench was coming from the water and the mud, from the bodies trapped there.”

“Eight thousand people are living here in this stink,” he continued. “They have been here for three weeks.”

Tide-mark of misery

Sarmad went on to talk about how things look close-up.

“The worst cases of malnutrition are really bad, distorted skeletal faces and pale skin,” he shares. “Children are suffering a lot from skin diseases. They play in the water because there is nowhere else for them to go. They need child-friendly spaces and health care”, says the World Vision Advocacy Manager for Pakistan.
 
Sarmad was seeing what the flood leaves behind. A tide-mark of misery. The numbers of people in need are simply overwhelming the efforts of government and aid agencies alike.  

Across the river

Further to the south, the flooded river at Khaipur is now so wide it’s only just possible to make out the other side. Twelve hundred people here were the first to be flooded out. They had built their homes close to the river bank and farmed their fields and plantations of bananas and dates in the river plain.

Now they sit at the water’s edge under dark green relief tents or the gaily coloured ones normally used for weddings. The people can see their roofs just under the water. The tops of their trees breaking the surface.
They have a large number of buffalo, cows and goats with them, grazing free during the day and tethered to tents or beds during the night. The ground is covered in animal dung and is getting worse every day.

The animals are sleeping crammed together with the children.

Three long months ahead
 
Added to this is the solid waste from the houses. The people have no toilets, only the mud around them. It’s hot and humid, noisy and crowded. The government says people will be here for three months more before they can return to their homes.
 
These are just two of thousands of communities of people displaced from their homes by the flood. Common problems of overcrowded and unhygienic living are causing widespread ill health.

Scabies spreading like wildfire

Skin diseases are rife amongst children in particular. Scabies is epidemic, and spreading like wildfire. Claire, one of World Vision’s health specialists explains what scabies is.

“Little mites burrow around under your skin. They defecate there causing inflammation and intense itching. You scratch and get them under your fingernails and so they spread. They also get into the seams of your clothes and only boiling or hot ironing will kill them. If you brush your infected arm against someone else the mites pass to the other person.”

The treatment is a pesticide solution you paint on your skin. It only works if you break the chain of infection by boiling all the clothes and bedding of the whole family and of everyone else you are rubbing against every day.”
 
 The flood and disease gush like water from a broken main but the tap delivering resources seems stuck three quarters shut.
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