The situation faced by the hundreds of thousands of IDPs in makeshift camps is getting grimmer. The IDPs are already contending with gross inadequacies in terms of shelter, food, potable water and access to education or income-generating activities. Now, the World Health Organisation warns that the camps risk running out of essential medical supplies within two to three weeks unless donors deliver more funds soon. This is a catastrophe in the making.

The cramped and unhygienic conditions prevalent at the camps have already raised the incidence of illnesses such as cholera, malaria and acute diarrhoea. With the monsoons coming up and many of the camps located in areas that are likely to be flooded, as WHO noted, the risk of full-blown epidemics looms large.

The international community must immediately make good on its promises for donations, and make further pledges. According to WHO, the UN appealed to the international community for $530m for the aid of Pakistan’s IDPs. Of this, $37m is earmarked for basic health needs, but only 27 per cent of this sum is met by the money delivered and pledges made so far. More, much more,is needed. Meanwhile, cash-strapped though Islamabad is, ways must be found to aid the IDPs.

Out-of-the-box thinking is needed urgently — after all, these citizens are victims in equal measure of the extremist line taken by the militants, the domestic and international policies that allowed the militants to consolidate power in the first place, and the resultantly inevitable offensive launched by the Pakistan Army. Each avoidable death will further alienate and potentially radicalise an already disillusioned segment of the citizenry. The state cannot afford to be seen as abandoning its citizens to the scourge of disease and death that will follow if the supply of essential medicines and basic health services at the camps slows down.