165 dead from diseases in Pakistan’s Sindh

Islamabad, March 1: The toll in an outbreak of water-borne and food shortage diseases has reached 165 in a district of Pakistan’s Sindh province since this January.

People in Tharparkar district, largely from the Hindu community, held a special prayer meeting last month and invoked divine intervention amid rising deaths of children since the government was not able to render help and improve the situation, a report in Dunya News said.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has constituted a two-member judicial commission to monitor the situation, the report said.

“I have improved health services, upgraded basic health units, dispensaries and taluka hospitals by providing equipment and have doubled the budget for medicines,” Qaim Ali shah was quoted to have said.

Many people, mostly children, died due to the shortage of food, and the area was declared as disaster affected by the chief minister earlier also in 2012.

Due to the below average rainfall in Thar in recent years, the 22,000-km desert has, as a consequence, suffered major losses of human lives and livestock. (IANS)