ISLAMABAD: The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has estimated that nearly 650,000 pregnant women require maternal health services in Pakistan’s flood-affected areas, adding that about 73,000 of them are expected to deliver in the coming month and will need skilled birth attendants, newborn care, and support.
Pakistan has witnessed torrential rains and floods since the beginning of monsoon in June that have affected about 33 million people, according to official estimates.
UNFPA says that 6.4 million people in the country require humanitarian assistance following the monsoon rains, floods, and landslides in Pakistan, and more than 1.6 million of them are women of childbearing age.
“Pregnancies and childbirth can’t wait for emergencies or natural disasters to be over,” the UN agency’s Pakistan representative Dr. Bakhtior Kadirov said in a statement released by his office. “This is when a woman and baby are vulnerable and need the most care.”
He said UNFPA was trying to ensure that pregnant women and new mothers continued to receive life-saving services even under the most challenging conditions.
According to the statement, UNFPA has scaled up its emergency response to provide life-saving reproductive health services and commodities, including dignity kits, for women and girls.
It has, so far, procured 8,311 dignity kits, 7,411 Newborn Baby Kits, and 6,412 Clean Delivery Kits for immediate distribution in Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Punjab provinces.
“We will continue supporting health facilities with the equipment and human resources to be fully operational despite the challenging humanitarian conditions,” Kadirov informed.
The UN agency is also prioritizing gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response services, including medical and psychosocial support to GBV survivors.
