Pakistan needs support over climate emergency

Islamabad, Oct 12 The Health Minister of Pakistan’s southern Sindh province Azra Fazal Pechuho said there is a need for technical support to the country in addition to the support being provided by the international community as climate change emergency will be a regular occurrence.
“We need to be prepared for all possibilities,” Pechuho said on Tuesday in Sindh’s capital Karachi while highlighting the challenges faced by the province amidst catastrophic floods this year in Pakistan.
She said that there was a state of health emergency in Sindh due to floods. Now that the water has become stagnant for months, a shift in disease patterns was underway. The weather was also getting colder, leading to pneumonia and other respiratory diseases.
Pechuho said that 7.4 million people were displaced in Sindh and the health department has so far managed to treat 3.9 million people.
Most hospitals were overburdened with internally displaced people who need treatment and almost every outpatient department was functioning at over 100 per cent capacity, she said.
“Rehabilitating the displaced would take approximately three months but this is simply an estimate and it all depends on when the water recedes and when the rehabilitation process can begin in earnest,” the Minister said.