26 January 2011
Pakistan floods - six months on
Pakistan floods: six months on - select an image to view videos and photo stories
The scale of the flooding in Pakistan was unprecedented. Ten years of rain fell in one week, 20 million people were affected, 14 million needed immediate humanitarian assistance. At the height of the crisis the water spanned an area the size of England.
The UK was one of the first countries to respond to the disaster by providing tents and shelter to 1.3 million people, basic health care to 2.3 million people and safe drinking water to millions more.
Six months on, the vast majority of people who were forced to flee from the floods have returned home. But many families have lost everything and the humanitarian challenge is shifting as people rejoin their communities.
Rebuilding lives and livelihoods
The flood water has left hundreds of villages and towns without basic services like clean drinking water, shelter and healthcare.
To help survivors settle back into their communities, UKaid is funding the reconstruction of boreholes and wells to provide clean water across Punjab and Sindh provinces. Hard to reach populations are receiving medical care from mobile health teams, and families have been given spades, wheelbarrows, saws and shelter kits to help clear their land and rebuild their homes.
To reduce long-term dependency on aid, the Department for International Development (DFID) is also providing wheat seed and tools to farmers and jobs and skills training to people in rural areas. Further funding is ensuring that 200,000 children will get back into the classroom after 10,000 schools were destroyed or damaged.
Reconstruction 'will take years'
The essential humanitarian aid provided by the UK and other international donors is supporting flood survivors as they recover from one of the largest disasters the world has ever seen. However, parts of southern Pakistan are still under several feet of water and millions of people are still in need of help.
"Six months since the devastating floods first hit, people in the UK can be proud that we're making a difference to the
lives of millions of people affected by the floods in Pakistan," said International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell.
"However, Pakistan still has a long way to go to recover; some areas of Sindh are still under water and hundreds of thousands of people are still living in temporary camps. Reconstructing the millions of homes, bridges, and schools that were destroyed will take years.
"That's why we are continuing to help millions of people in Pakistan to rebuild their lives, providing health care for more than two million people to try to avoid a crisis like the one in Haiti, and helping to get hundreds of thousands of children back in to education."
In total the UK government is providing, mainly via aid agencies:
- Safe drinking water to 2.5 million people.
- Tents and shelter for 1.3 million people.
- Toilets and sanitation for almost 500,000 people.
- Food packages for more than one million people in flood affected areas, in addition to nutritional support for half a million malnourished young children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
- Wheat and vegetable seeds, fertiliser, animal stock feed, and veterinary services to more than 115,000 rural families to avoid further loss of animals and dependency on food aid for the next year or more.
- Basic health care for around 2.3 million people.
- Help for 200,000 children by repairing 1,500 schools damaged by the floods and providing 200 temporary facilities for children whose schools have been destroyed across Sindh and the Punjab, as well as accelerating a project to build forty schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa benefitting another 9,000 boys and girls.
- Heath and hygiene education on how to avoid potentially fatal diseases for around one million people.
- Help for around one million people in rural areas to earn a living by providing jobs, skills training, as well as farming tools, seeds, and animals so families can restart their farms.
- Support to deliver 8,239 metric tonnes of food and other aid by UN helicopter airdrops, serving flood affected people across 160 different locations.
- Twelve planes (five Royal Air Force) flown in packed full of emergency aid.
The UK government has committed £134 million to help people affected by the monsoon floods in Pakistan, of which £20 million has still to be allocated and will be announced in coming months.
The UK public donated a further £68 million through the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal.
Visit the Flood Monitor to find out more about how UKaid is being spent to help flood survivors in Pakistan.