UNICEF needs 4.5m dollars for IDPs

PESHAWAR: UNICEF in Pakistan urgently needs 4.5 million dollars to provide drinking water and life-saving health and nutrition interventions to the most vulnerable displaced children.

The children's agency is facing a severe lack of funding, which may result in thousands of children and women displaced by the crisis in FATA and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa being deprived of essential services.

UNICEF has received a third installment of 58 million dollars it requested as part of a joint humanitarian appeal to provide vital support to the people displaced from the militancy-hit areas into camps and host communities, as well as those returning to Swat and other pacified areas.

As a result, 6,000 malnourished children recently displaced from restive Orakzai and Kurram agencies in tribal areas could be left without nutritional support if UNICEF does not quickly receive the 1 million dollars needed to assist them.

They include 1,000 children who are severely malnourished, and at risk of death without immediate assistance.

If 3 million dollars are not received by early June, critical water services in crowded IDP camps may be at risk from July, exposing about 1,25,000 people, including 1,06,000 in Jalozai camp alone, to potentially deadly diseases such as diarrhoea during summer.

Health services are also dramatically under-funded: UNICEF urgently requires 500,000 dollars to ensure that 42,000 children and 12,000 mothers living in Upper Swat have immunisation and other vital health services.

"Children and women are invariably the most vulnerable members of the community during a crisis like this one," UNICEF acting Deputy Representative, Dr Pirkko Heinonen, said.

"Coming as they do from historically disadvantaged areas, they need our timely support to ensure that they can come through this crisis safely, in good health and with good prospects for their future." Eight Pakistani children die of diarrhoea every hour, amongst IDPs, living in crowded and unsanitary conditions, this rate may soar if clean drinking water is not available.

Lack of services has an especially strong impact on women and children.

In a recent survey, half of women IDPs and a third of children reported illness during the past two weeks, compared to only a quarter of men. "Thanks to support from the international community last year, we were able to help IDPs weather months of displacement," said Dr Heinonen.