dpa
Islamabad
Pakistani leaders on Wednesday urged the world to deliver on humanitarian aid promises as six more people died of water-borne diseases after catastrophic floods that had submerged a third of the South Asian country.
“We need help. We need food for children and medicines,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said during visit to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly session.
In the capital Islamabad, junior Finance Minister Aisha Ghaus Pasha said the world should speed up the delivery of aid to prevent hunger and death. The pleas came as the death toll from the diseases like cholera, diarrhoea, skin allergies, malaria, dengue fever and dysentery reached 324 on Wednesday, according to the official statistics.
This number is above 1,569 deaths that had been caused by floods that were triggered by record monsoon rains that hit the country from mid-June.
More than 2.7 million people fell ill in the southern province of Sindh where large swathes of land remained under water for a third month, according to the provincial health department.
Around half a million children are among the people facing diseases and shortage of food and medicines, according to Mohamed Bilal of the al-Khidmat charity that works in the region. More than 100 flights carrying relief goods including food and medicines have landed in Pakistan so far, but humanitarian groups said much more was needed.
