PABBI, Pakistan — Five-year-old Shahid Khan struggled to remain conscious in his hospital bed as severe diarrhea threatened to kill him. His father watched helplessly, stricken at the thought of losing his son, one of the only things the floods had not already taken.
The young boy is one of millions of children who survived the floods that ravaged Pakistan over the last month but are now vulnerable to a second wave of death caused by waterborne disease, according to the United Nations.
Khan’s father, Ikramullah, fled Pabbi just before floods devastated the northwestern town about a month ago, abandoning his two-room house and all his possessions to save his wife and four children.
“I saved my kids. That was everything for me,’’ said Ikramullah, whose 6-year-old son, Waqar, has also battled severe diarrhea in recent days. “Now I see I’m losing them. We’re devastated.’’
Ten other children lay in beds near Khan at the diarrhea treatment center run by the World Health Organization in Pabbi, two of whom were in critical condition.
Access to clean water has always been a problem in Pakistan, but the floods have made the situation much worse by breaking open sewer lines, filling wells with dirty water and displacing millions of people who have been forced to use the contaminated water around them.
The environment is especially dangerous for children, who are more vulnerable to diseases such as diarrhea and dysentery because they are more easily dehydrated. Many children in Pakistan also suffered from malnutrition before the floods hit, leaving them with weakened immune systems.
About 3.5 million children are at imminent risk of waterborne disease and 72,000 are at high risk of death, according to the UN.
The Pakistani government and international aid groups have worked to get clean water to millions of people affected by the floods and treat those suffering from waterborne diseases. But efforts have been overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, which has displaced a million more people in recent days.
Muslim countries, organizations, and individuals have pledged nearly $1 billion in cash and relief supplies to help Pakistan, the head of a group of Islamic states said yesterday.
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, head of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, said the pledges came from Muslim states, NGOs, OIC institutions, and telethons held in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
The floods started in the northwest in late July after extremely heavy monsoon rains and surged south along the Indus River, killing more than 1,600 people, damaging or destroying more than 1.2 million homes, and inundating one-fifth of the country, an area larger than England.
