Thaindian News

Islamabad, Sep 20 (IANS) The devastating floods that have affected over seven million people in Sindh province will magnify food insecurity in the country, said a Pakistani daily.

Floods in Sindh province have seen almost almost half a million people accommodated in more than 2,500 camps. As many as 1.3 million homes have been damaged and six million acres of land, including two million acres under cultivation, inundated.

An editorial in the News International said there is even worse news, with the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) saying that Sindh has the highest rate of malnutrition among children in the country.

“…17.5 percent of those under five years of age suffering acute malnutrition, with seven percent of them being severely malnourished. Half of all children exhibit stunted growth and 72 percent of the entire population of Sindh is food insecure,” it said.

Highlighting the gravity of the situation, the editorial added: “Taking the outdated figure of the 1998 census the population of Sindh was put at 30.4 million, thus a minimum of 21,888,000 people are food insecure and the real number is far greater than that.”

It went on to say that this level of “food insecurity has not happened overnight and has increased steadily year-on-year and cannot be attributed to the floods of 2010 and 2011 alone, neither can the stunting of children’s growth”.

“The effects of the floods are going to magnify food insecurity dramatically in the short term and chronically in the long term.”

The editorial added: “…Sindh was half-starved before this year’s floods. Must we now consider the dreadful spectre of the next stage in this cycle of deprivation - famine?”