Pakistan floods: Over 60K pregnant women lack maternal services

ISLAMABAD: The floods that ravaged one-third of Pakistan have left about 600,000 pregnant women lacking maternal health services including a huge impact on the health facilities for children, media reports said citing a state minister.

Minister of State for Finance and Revenue Aisha Ghous Pasha on Thursday said that 600,000 pregnant women in flood-hit areas lack these basic facilities and raised an alarm that over 5 million children have no immunization or nutritional care, reported Dawn.

She exhorted that Pakistan must ramp up efforts to get reproductive health services for women and health care services for children back on track. She made the remarks while addressing the gathering at the seventh meeting of the Parliamentary Forum on Population (PFP), a cross-party platform to raise parliamentary awareness on population and development.

Among those who attended the meeting were members of the Senate, and legislators from the national and provincial assemblies representing all major political parties attended the meeting.

Over rampant climate change and its devastating effects in the form of flash floods, Pasha said that the international community must come together to channel funds supporting countries like Pakistan.

Zeba Sathar, country director of the Population Council, said that the floods have caused great misery for the marginalized population who was already in the grip of economic hardships. Putting out the data, Sathar said that 19 million people out of the 31 million persons living in severely affected areas are poor.