The disaster has forced two million to flee their homes. Residents have railed against the government for failing to provide enough emergency assistance nearly a week after extremely heavy monsoon rains triggered raging floodwaters in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province.

The government says it has deployed thousands of rescue workers who have so far saved an estimated 28,000 people and distributed basic food items. The army has also sent some 30,000 troops and dozens of helicopters, but the scale of the disaster is so vast that many residents said it seems like officials are doing nothing. Thousands more people in the province remain trapped by the floodwaters.  The anger of the flood victims poses a danger to the already struggling government, now competing with Islamist movements to deliver aid in a region with strong Taliban influence.

“We need tents. Just look around,” said flood victim Faisal Islam, sitting on the only dry ground he could find in Nowshera district — a highway median — surrounded by hundreds of people in makeshift camps.

Now people in the northwest also face the threat of waterborne disease — which could kill thousands more if health workers cannot deliver enough clean drinking water and treat and isolate any patients in crowded relief camps.

“To avert the looming threat of spread of waterborne diseases, especially cholera, we have dispatched dozens of mobile medical teams in the affected districts,” said Sohail Altaf, the top medical official in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa.

Officials have yet to receive concrete reports of cholera cases, but fear of an outbreak is high, said Altaf. Patients with stomach problems from dirty water are being treated in government medical camps, he said. The death toll from the disaster has ranged from about 870 provided by the prime minister’s office to 1,200 given by Bashir Ahmed Bilour, senior minister in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, who warned that it could go even higher.

More than two million people have been displaced, he said. Pakistan’s international partners have tried to bolster the government’s response by offering millions of dollars in emergency aid. The United Nations and the United States announced on Saturday that they would provide $10 million each in emergency assistance.

The US has also provided rescue boats, water filtration units, prefabricated steel bridges and thousands of packaged meals that Pakistani soldiers tossed from helicopters as flood victims scrambled to catch them.  Representatives from a charity allegedly linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba group distributed food and offered medical services on Sunday to victims in the town of Charsada.

“We are reaching people at their doorsteps and in the streets, especially women and children who are stuck in their homes,” said an activist with the Falah-e-Insaniat charity who would identify himself only by his first name, Saqib.