Reuters AlertNet Lite - Thousands of Pakistani children need food and shelter after severe flooding leaves families with nothing

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Thousands of Pakistani children need food and shelter after severe flooding leaves families with nothing

09 Jul 2007 09:00:00 GMT
Source: International Save the Children Alliance

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Pakistan Cyclone. Residents make their way through a flooded street after heavy rain in Lahore June 29, 2007. Pakistani police fired teargas on Friday to break up a protest by angry cyclone survivors as rescuers struggled to reach communities cut off by floods affecting 900,000 people. REUTERS/Mohsin Raza
PAKISTAN

Background

• S. Asia monsoon

• Pakistan violence

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(9 July, 2007) Save the Children is responding to the needs of around 60,000 children that have been left homeless and vulnerable by Cyclone Yemyin and the ensuing heavy rains.

Floods have left thousands homeless in Pakistan's southwest provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. According to initial estimates, at least 250 people have been killed, 250,000 houses damaged, and around 1.5 million people have been left homeless. Some families have lost everything and are living under trees with no food or clean drinking water.

Save the Children is working to provide vital relief in five districts of Balochistan and one agency in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The aid agency will be providing 12,000 families with food, materials to help build shelters, and relief items to replace household items they may have lost including kitchen equipment and soap.

Gareth Owen, Save the Children's Director of Emergencies, said: "The lack of shelter, food and clean water combined with exposure to the hot and humid weather puts children in real danger. Save the Children is deeply concerned about the health and welfare of these children in Pakistan whose lives have been turned upside down by the floods. Save the Children staff are on the ground right now responding to the needs of the most vulnerable."

Children's education is one of the first things to suffer when communities are disrupted by an emergency. In Pakistan, the floods have devastated many of the few existing schools and destroyed children's books, school supplies, uniforms, and bags. Schools that were not damaged are being used as emergency shelter for displaced families. Save the Children will be working to help repair the school infrastructure and providing school items, like paper, slates and chalk, and play kits, to schools to minimize the disruption to children's education.

In the medium-term, Save the Children will work with the government and communities to reconstruct destroyed schools, better manage schools and increase enrollment, particularly for girls while also increasing education quality through teacher training.

[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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Topics

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Emergencies

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Last updated:Mon Jul 9 13:55:31 2007