31 Aug 2010

Health crisis feared in flooding aftermath

9:01 pm on 31 August 2010

A huge body of floodwater that swept through Pakistan is finally starting to drain into the Arabian Sea.

But aid agencies are warning of a health crisis among the eight million people who have been displaced, the BBC reports.

For more than a week the vast volume of water has travelled through Sindh province in the south of Pakistan, flooding countless villages and towns and every day forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

The water is slowly starting to flow into the Arabian Sea, but has left behind a chaos of destroyed homes, crops, roads and bridges.

Few of the people displaced have clean drinking water and as remaining water stagnates, cases of malaria are also rising.

More than 1,600 people have died as a result of the flooding.