Westport, Conn. (22 June 2009) In an effort to expand critical
relief and health services to thousands of children and family members forced from their homes in northwestern Pakistan, Save the Children has launched a nutritional program for children under 5,
whose health is increasingly at risk as their displacement lengthens.The humanitarian agency also will provide health services and information to pregnant and lactating women.The
current humanitarian crisis is the result of a mass exodus of more than 2 million people from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) since early May. Over half of those fleeing the
violence are children. Save the Children will establish two stabilisation centres for severely malnourished children suffering medical complications in hospitals in Mardan and Swabi. The
agency continues to deploy health teams, comprising male and female doctors as well as a lab technician and other health workers, to conduct mobile clinics in areas where large numbers of families
have fled and provide medical supplies to overstretched government facilities. The teams will transport the most serious cases back to stabilisation centres for further assistance. “Parents’ resources are dwindling, making it difficult for them to provide nutritious food to their children,” said Ned Olney, Save the Children’s vice president for global
humanitarian response. “With the early years so critical for children’s cognitive and physical development and for future success, it is vital that we address hunger and
malnutrition.”To date, Save the Children has reached approximately 117,079 persons (including 70,247 children) with emergency healthcare, relief goods and child protection programming
in Mardan and Swabi districts. The agency has begun monthly family food distributions for 28,000 families, numbering close to 196,000 people, about half of them children, and is providing baby kits to
families with infants.Save the Children, which has been working in Pakistan for three decades and is focused on assisting displaced families living in remote, scattered villages in the NWFP,
where few other agencies are providing support.
With your support
Save the Children needs your support to help meet the most critical needs of children and families who are fleeing
the violence in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. If you would like to donate to Save the Children please select your national organisation from the list below, or visit Save the Children US Website. Your donation will help provide drinking water, food distribution and
other necessities.
More information
Please contact Kate Conradt, Save the Children US, on 001 202-640-6631 or 001 202-294-9700
for media enquiries.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
Kashmiri women rest in their boats after manually removing weeds from Dal Lake in Srinagar June 23, 2009.India will spend more than $290 million cleaning up two iconic lakes in Kashmir, ...
