ISLAMABAD: The Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, is seeing alarmingly high number of patients with malaria and children with malnutrition among flood-affected communities it assists in Sindh and Balochistan.

Catastrophic flooding began in June, and the situation remains an emergency, with critical humanitarian needs. The current response is inadequate. The basic needs of people living in worst flood-affected areas such as access to essential food assistance, healthcare and safe drinking water, remain unmet, the MSF said in a statement on Monday.

In Sindh and eastern Balochistan, the MSF teams are seeing the high number of people needing treatment for malaria. Despite colder season when malaria rates are expected to decline, “we continue to see malaria positivity rates of 50 per cent during December in patients screened in our mobile medical clinics and we have treated more than 42,000 patients since October”, it added.

“Since the start of our activities in these regions, we have screened a total of 28,313 children for malnutrition in our mobile medical clinics. Of those screened, 23pc (6,489) had severe acute malnutrition and 31pc (8,738) had moderate acute malnutrition, comprising more than half of the children who arrived at our clinics,” the MSF said.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2023