Children sit among the rubble of their house in Khyber. Photo: Reuters/Fayaz Aziz, courtesy www.alertnet.org

September 1, 2010: Even before Pakistan’s tragic floods, the nation’s child malnutrition rates were high: 36 percent of children were underweight and 44 percent faced stunted growth.

Now that the worst storm waters in Pakistan’s history have damaged 14 percent of farmland and washed away 75,000 tons of stored grains, Pakistani children are suffering more acutely than ever.

“Anything I receive I give to my children. Sometimes their mother, their grandparents and I eat nothing... They are growing weaker and my five-year-old daughter has high fever,” Abdullah Khan told IRIN news service by phone from Swat. He said the floods have “even wiped out the berries or grasses we could otherwise have eaten.”

Millions of children like Khan’s are likely to fall victim to illness. According to the UN, 3.5 million children are at risk of deadly water-borne diseases due to malnutrition, dirty drinking water, and mosquito outbreaks.

SOS Children’s Villages, on the ground in Pakistan for more than three decades, is taking action to help such vulnerable children.

SOS Children’s Villages Sending Food Packages to Ravaged Areas

Relief packages have been sent by SOS Villages to families in flood-affected areas of Pakistan.

SOS has sent trucks containing a total of 500 food packages, or 80,000 meals, to heavily affected areas in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and south Punjab. The charity supplied another truckload of food containing 500 packages bound for Madyan in Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Because of its longstanding presence in Pakistan, SOS has established relationships with reliable, effective local partners to provide emergency relief. To distribute the food packages, for instance, SOS-Pakistan is working with Concerned Citizens of Pakistan.

SOS has ordered another 1,000 packages and will step up distribution as more funding becomes available.

Providing Sorely Needed Tents and Medical Supplies

A flood victim attempts to clean her son in Sukkur. Photo: Reuters/Akhtar Soomro, courtesy www.alertnet.org

The floods have forced some six million people from their homes. Through the Pakistan army base in Karachi, SOS has sent 500 tents to children and their families at Shadadkot on the Balochistan/Sindh border. SOS has ordered 1,000 more tents from a Karachi manufacturer.

In areas where the floodwaters have receded, diseases are now the most imminent threat.  SOS is working to ensure that children in those areas are provided with medical supplies as soon as possible.

Help SOS feed Pakistan’s desperate children. A little bit goes such a long way for a child who has lost everything and for whom a food package means life over death.  Donate now to support SOS Children's Villages around the world.

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