Four million homeless in Pakistan

CBC News:

Roughly four million people — double previous estimates — have been left homeless by the flooding in Pakistan, the United Nations says.

The latest figure on the number of people left without a home after three weeks of flooding comes ahead of a special meeting of the UN General Assembly on the disaster. Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon will attend the meeting in New York City.

The UN has, thus far, raised less than half of its $460-million aid target, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expected to ask countries to contribute more to an aid effort that has been slow.

Daniel Toole, UNICEF's regional director for South Asia, said Thursday that Pakistan will need aid for several months to deal with the effects of the flooding.

Some parts of the country may remain under water well after the rains stop, he said, and stagnant water boosts the risk of malaria, diarrhea and cholera.

UNICEF expects to boost its $47-million appeal target to five times that to handle the needs, Toole said.

About 20 million people in Pakistan — and about one-fifth of the country — have been affected by the flooding. More than 1,600 people have been killed.

'Impact very, very real'

Canadian Red Cross spokesman Howard Arfin said a "health disaster" is slowly growing in the country.

"It’s not as dramatic as a tsunami wave or, more recently, the earthquake in Haiti, but the impact on people is very, very real," Arfin said from Islamabad.

"It’s not immediate. It’s slow with the kinds of diseases that are brought on by water, that are brought on by lack of food, that are brought on by lack of shelter," he said.

The World Health Organization has said that about six million people in Pakistan are at risk form water-borne diseases.

Reporting near the town of Baseera, in Sindh province, CBC's Adrienne Arsenault said the next seven days are critical for the area as flood waters are still rising.

On a relief mission Thursday in a Pakistani army boat, she said water levels are so high that she was able to pluck dates from the tops of palm trees.

Many area men have refused to leave their homes, choosing to stay to protect them.

"The army keeps trying to get them to get out," she said. "They don't want to, and so [the army] ends up constantly ferrying out enough rations for a week or so."

"Help is coming … but as one man shouted at us today from that water: 'This is a horrible place,'" she said.