CHUNG: In a former classroom, now a makeshift relief camp, pregnant women take refuge from the floods that have ravaged eastern Pakistan, their bodies aching, eyes heavy with exhaustion and silent despair.

Waiting for the water that swallowed their homes to recede, women in Chung, a settlement on Lahore’s outskirts, have limited access to sanitary pads and essential medicines, including pregnancy-related care.

Shumaila Riaz, 19, and seven months pregnant with her first child, spent the past four days in the relief camp, enduring pregnancy cramps.

“I wanted to think about the child I am going to have, but now, I am not even certain about my own future,” she told AFP.

Clad in dirty clothes they have worn for days and with unbrushed hair, women huddle in the overcrowded school hosting more than 2,000 people, surrounded by mud and stagnant rainwater.

Pregnant and displaced, many say they face a crisis of ‘health and dignity’

“My body aches a lot and I can’t get the medicines I want here,” said 19-year-old Fatima, mother to a one-year-old daughter and four months pregnant.

“I used to eat as I please, sleep as I please, walk as I please — that is all gone now. I can’t do that here,” added Fatima, who asked AFP not to use her real name.

Monsoon rains over the past week swelled three major rivers that cut through Punjab, Pakistan’s agricultural heartland. The number of affected people rose Sunday to more than two million, according to provincial minister Marriyum Aurangzeb.

Hundreds of thousands people have been evacuated, with 115,000 rescued by boat in what the provincial government called the largest rescue operation in Punjab’s history. The floods have affected mostly rural areas, but heavy rain has also inundated parts of Lahore, the country’s second-largest city.

Landslides and floods triggered by heavier-than-usual monsoon rains, which scientists say are being made more erratic by climate change, have killed more than 850 people nationwide since June. The latest downpour has killed at least 32 people, the minister said on Sunday.

Infections and trauma

For women, now living in tents held together with thin wooden sticks, the challenges extend beyond pregnancy to basic hygiene and dignity. Menstruation remains a taboo topic in Pakistan, and displaced women struggle to find pads and privacy.

“We are struggling to get pads for when we get our period. And even if we do, there are no proper bathrooms to use,” said Aleema Bibi, 35, as her baby slept on a sheet soiled with mud.

“We go to the homes nearby to use the bathroom,” she added.

Jameela, who uses only one name, said she seeks privacy in a makeshift bathroom next to a cowshed.

“We wait for men in these homes to leave, so that we can go use the bathrooms and change our pads,” she said.

Outside the medical truck beside the relief camp, a concerned woman asked where to take her eight-month-pregnant daughter-in-law who had gone into labour, AFP journalists saw.

The pregnant women are also vulnerable to infectious diseases, according to doctors in the medical camp set up by a local NGO.

“I receive around 200 to 300 patients every day with different infections and water-borne diseases,” said Dr Fahad Abbas. “There are a lot of patients here who are going through psychological trauma, especially women and children, after losing their homes.”

Even before the floods, Pakistan faced a maternal and infant health crisis. According to the World Health Organisation, 675 babies under one month old die every day in the country, along with 27 women in perinatal stages from preventable complications.

“We escaped death, but this misery is no less than death either,” Jameela said.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2025