Floodwaters that have devastated Pakistan for five weeks headed to the Arabian Sea on Tuesday after swallowing two final towns, but the challenges of delivering emergency aid to 8 million people remained. The floods have moved down from the mountainous northwest, submerging or affecting almost 1/5 of the country at their peak. Waters have begun to recede in the north and in Punjab, but they have been submerging towns in southern Sindh province close to the Indus River over the last 10 days. Government official Hadi Bakhsh said the last two towns in the path of the floods were hit late Monday. “The floodwaters hit Khahre Jamali and Jati towns, and now there is no other village or town in the way of the deluge,” he said, adding that people had already fled the towns, parts of which were under 10 feet of water. “The floodwaters are now heading to the Arabian Sea,” he said. Flood victims frustrated with medical care Victims of Pakistan's floods on Tuesday queued at hospitals where scant resources were available to treat a rising number of patients. “Whatever stock of medicines we have is about to finish and the number of patients will increase in the coming days,” said Ashiq Hussain Malik, medical superintendent of Muzaffargarh's main district hospital in Punjab province. “Nearly 60 percent of patients are suffering from gastroenteritis, diarrhoea, skin and eye infections and the patients who are coming here are in a pretty bad condition.” Authorities have struggled to feed, house and arrange medical care for the survivors of the floods. Foreign countries and the UN were slow to respond to the disaster, in part because it took a long time for its extent to become clear. Aid is slowly reaching the worst-affected areas by army helicopter, road and boat, but millions have received little or no help. The UN warned that additional funding for emergency food was urgently needed to ensure supplies into next month. Once all the floodwaters recede, the country will be left with a massive relief and reconstruction effort that will cost billions of dollars and take years. An estimated 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed, five times as many as were hit by this year's earthquake in Haiti. India offers $20m India on Tuesday offered another $20m in flood aid to Pakistan, the country's foreign minister said, boosting efforts to build goodwill between the estranged neighbors. S.M. Krishna told parliament a fresh instalment of 20 million dollars will boost India's total aid contributions for Pakistan to 25 million dollars. “As a more concrete assessment of the damage inflicted by this natural disaster and the urgent needs of the people of Pakistan emerges, government has decided to increase its assistance to Pakistan from five million dollars,” he said.
