Pakistan in need
The devastating floods that have rolled through Pakistan for over a month now have left a disaster of massive scale in their wake. For a time, an area the size of England was submerged - one fifth of all the land in Pakistan. Although immediate loss of life remains relatively low (near 2,000 according to reports), damages from loss exceed $43 billion, almost one quarter of Pakistan's GDP. As the waters recede Nearly 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) of existing crops are gone, 1.2 million livestock and 6 million poultry killed, and 17 million of Pakistan's 167 million people affected. It can be difficult to imagine individual stories of need when presented with such huge numbers, to see oneself in another's shoes when their overall predicament seems so vast and dire. Hopefully this collection of photographs from just the past week in Pakistan can help convey some of the stories behind the numbers. One way you can help is by texting "SWAT" to 50555 from your mobile phone to give $10 to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) - more ways to help linked below entry. (43 photos total)
An Afghan refugee whose house was demolished by heavy flooding, washes himself amidst the rubble in Azakhel near Peshawar, Pakistan Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010. Thousands of Afghan refugees here are struggling to recover from a double tragedy, seeing their homes across the border engulfed by war and then their refugee camps here demolished by floods. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) #
A technician stands in an operating theater in a Pakistani hospital with equipment ruined by floodwaters (note high-water mark on the walls) in Nowshera, Pakistan on August 27, 2010. When water gushed through the walls of Nowshera hospital last month it filled operating rooms and wards and left them clogged with stinking mud, abandoning hundreds of patients to their fate. (AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images) #
Trucks transporting relief goods are blocked on the road by Pakistani farmers demanding that the government irrigate their lands in Shikarpur on September 3, 2010. Fresh floods in southern Pakistan are snaring at least a million people displaced by earlier flooding, adding to the huge problems faced by the underfunded relief effort, UN aid agencies warned. (ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images) #
Pakistani flood survivors wait for relief, as they return to their home after flood waters receded on the outskirts of Thatta town, Sindh province, southern Pakistan, Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. The waters are still swamping rich agricultural land in the southern provinces of Sindh and Punjab. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian) #
An internally displaced Pakistani man (center, in cap) fights with a policeman (right, white shirt) as they wait for relief goods in Larkana on September 3, 2010. Flood victims say they have received little government help, and most assistance has come to them from private charities. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned Thursday that survivors' anger was beginning to hamper those aid efforts. (ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images) #
Flood victims struggle for clean water from a tanker truck in Thatta in southern Sindh province on August 30, 2010. Pakistani troops and workers were on a "war footing" over the weekend battling to save the southern city of Thatta after most of the 300,000 population fled the advancing waters. (ASIF HASSAN/AFP/Getty Images) #
A young flood victim looks on at a relief camp in Nowshera in northwestern Pakistan on September 3, 2010. Pakistan's northwest, the first region to be hit by the floods and the most devastated, now has roads lined with tents and tens of thousands of displaced waiting to go home. (REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl) #
