The United Nations on Thursday estimated 4.6 million people are still without shelter after Pakistan’s devastating floods, tripling its target number for assistance as it prepared to drum up more aid.
The United Nations has described Pakistan’s worst humanitarian crisis as one of the world’s biggest disasters, but while foreign aid is now reaching some of the 20 million flood victims, critics have slammed the response as too slow.
At least six million survivors are dependent on humanitarian assistance to survive, in desperate need of food, shelter and clean drinking water, with concerns growing over potential outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and hepatitis.
‘Roughly 4.6 million people are still without shelter,’ Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Islamabad, said.
The estimate includes hundreds of thousands of people who are still on the move, he said. Not all of them could be considered technically ‘homeless’ because they may find homes to return to when the flood waters recede.
‘In this context we have decided to increase the number of targeted beneficiaries for tents and plastic sheeting from the initial figure of two million to at least six million,’ he said.
At a camp for the displaced from across the country, survivors are battling with crippling heat, miserable sanitation and swarms of mosquitoes.
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