Source: Express Tribune
Date: February 11, 2011
Six months after the floods, one of the most urgent issues facing the affected people is the alarming levels of malnutrition among children.
A report by UNICEF ‘Children in Pakistan: Six Months After the Floods’ presented an analysis from July 2010 to January 2011 of the reach and scale of the disaster, UNICEF’s response and the growing needs that continue to alarm relief organisations.
To put the malnutrition crisis in perspective, the report presented Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) rates in the flood-hit areas of Punjab and Sindh, released in late January 2011 by the Sindh and Punjab departments of health.
A GAM rate reveals how many children in a given population are moderately or severely malnourished, while SAM is an acute state which makes a child 10 times more likely to die before his fifth birthday compared to a healthy child.
The World Health Organization gives 15 per cent as the emergency threshold level to trigger a humanitarian crisis.
In Northern Sindh, the GAM rate is 23.1 per cent and in Southern Sindh, it is 21.2 per cent.
The SAM rate in Northern Sindh is 6.1 per cent, posing an immediate threat to the lives of 61,000 children.
In Punjab, data reveals a GAM of 14 per cent, just below the emergency level and an SAM rate of 3.6.
Survey results from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan are expected this month.
For more details: http://tribune.com.pk/story/117154/severe-malnutrition-persists-among-flood-hit-children/
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