PESHAWAR: Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in collaboration with International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has helped around 314,167 flood victims surrounded by standing water for months in flood affected areas to access clean drinking water. (IFRC).
These flood survivors were forced to consume contaminated flood water, leading to an increase in various water-borne diseases in the flood-affected areas.
In 19 months of flood response and recovery operations, the IFRC-supported PRCS focused on implementing Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services in flood-affected areas across Pakistan, highlighted a document shared on social media.
Recognizing the high vulnerability of flood-affected people to water-borne diseases, the organizations focused on providing safe drinking water in flood-affected areas and deployed 13 water treatment plants at seven locations in Sindh, four in Balochistan and two in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
These water treatment plants benefited approximately 42,000 people daily in these provinces for more than three months by providing more than 28 million liters of drinking water.
In addition, about 98 hand pumps have been constructed and reconstructed in flood-affected areas, benefiting more than 35,000 people.
Five solar water filtration plants were also built in Sindh and Baluchistan provinces, benefiting 12,600 people.
An additional 4,000 household water filters have been distributed in Larkana, Qambar Shahdadkot, Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Dadu districts of Sindh to ensure availability of safe drinking water at the household level.
“The 2022 floods have caused devastating damage in our area and caused huge losses to the local communities,” noted Mumtaz Ali Magsi of Qubo Saeed Khan village, Qambar Shahdadkot district, Sindh.
Mumtaz said that the villagers were facing a very serious problem of lack of clean drinking water in the post-flood scenario.
The support provided by PRCS/IFRC through the installation of solar filtration equipment in his village has benefited a large number of people in getting clean and healthy water, he added.
The people of Qubo Saeed Khan and its adjoining villages are grateful from the bottom of their hearts to PRCS and IFRC for solving a very real problem, Ali noted.
It deserves to be added here that PRCS in collaboration with IFRC also provided support to 1,500 households in the construction of permanent household latrines. Over 400 permanent household latrines have been built so far, helping to minimize the risk of hygiene-related diseases.
Special attention was also paid to community capacity building and for this purpose hygiene promotion training was conducted through which 145 PRCS staff and volunteers were trained in Larkana, Shikarpur, Qambar Shahdadkot, Dadu and Khairpur districts of Sindh.
These trained PRCS staff and volunteers conducted 1,200 hygiene promotion sessions in 25 targeted communities and reached nearly 40,000 people in flood-affected areas.
