Another five people die of malnutrition in Thar
Authorities have been busy dispensing food aid and sending medics to attend to the sick.
MITHI (Web Desk) – Five more people, including two women and a child, died in Tharparkar, where the ongoing drought has reportedly claimed many lives, Dunya News reported on Friday.
With the rise in temperature, scores of residents of various villages of Thar, including children and women, are suffering from malaria, gastroentritis, diarrhoea, TB and other diseases.
According to sources, another seven hundred patients including children have been admitted in Mithi Civil Hospital during last few days.
Meanwhile, Bahria Town, Al-Khidmat Foundation, Falah-e-Insaniyat and other organizations are busy in relief activities in different areas of Tharparkar district.
The desert region in Tharparkar, one of Pakistan's poorest districts, spreads over nearly 20,000 square kilometres (7,700 square miles) in the country's southeast and is home to some 1.3 million people.
Between March 2013 and February this year, rainfall was 30 per cent below usual, according to government data, with the worst-hit towns of Diplo, Chacro and Islamkot barely touched by a drop of water for months.
Life in the desert is closely tied to rain-dependent crops and animals, with farmers relying on beans, wheat, and sesame seeds for survival, bartering surplus in exchange for livestock.
The drought is not the only reason for the recent deaths — observers say they have come about as a result of endemic poverty, exacerbated by the drought and an outbreak of disease killing livestock.
Authorities have been busy dispensing food aid and sending medics to attend to the sick following visits by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who leads the Pakistan People's Party which rules the province.
But observers say the relief work fails to address the root causes of such disasters and warn they are likely to be repeated.
