Lahore:
Despite the official insurance policies of a smooth relief, a gloomy reality in Punjab’s flood -stricken districts lurking, where health issues escalate, giving outbreaks of flood -related diseases.
While provincial authorities highlight rescue numbers and medical camps, evidence from Earth shows overwhelmed health units, lack of medicine and citizens left to fit themselves in diseases.
Doctors and relief workers say patients suffering from diarrhea, skin infections, and dengue often wait for hours, sometimes days, for proper treatment. In some camps, anti-malarium substances and rabies vaccines have reportedly run out of having left the residents vulnerable.
“We treat dozens of patients in tents without enough supplies. Official tallies do not match the situation here,” said a health worker in Narowal, requesting anonymity.
Continuous floods since the end of August have expelled over two million people in Punjab, immersed 2,000 villages and washed away huge agricultural land. Thousands of hectares of rice, cotton and sugar cane have been destroyed, as further composed food safety.
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The provincial government claims to have saved nearly 1.9 million people, created more than 1,000 relief and implemented mobile health units. But reports from the field indicate that many villages remain cut off, with relief measures that only reach them sporadically.
In Hafizabad and Kasur, the locals complain that they have not received any consistent supply of clean water or medical assistance.
Health registers show more than 15,400 cases of dengue, diarrhea, malaria and skin diseases were detected across Punjab in the last month.
Lahore alone reported over 9,000 patients in the last 24 hours. According to Punjab Health Department, the province has been logging 310 Dengue cases since January, 79 of them in Lahore. The crisis extends beyond vector-borne diseases-99 snakebites and 167 dog bites have also been reported.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of “burial risks” of epidemic outbreaks that emphasize the urgent need for clean water, sanitation and an uninterrupted supply of medication. Auxiliary groups confirm that conditions in several camps remain unsanitarian, with stagnant flooding mosquito and raising the likelihood of cholera and dysentery.
Read more: The worst monsoon floods in decades leave millions displaced in Pakistan
Still, Punjab Minister Khawaja Imran Nazir insists the government is prepared. He said medical teams are on 24-hour alert, “Clinics on Wheels” runs, and all districts have been instructed to stock emergency medicine. Main Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif personally monitors auxiliary operations, where army units are mobilized in several districts, says the provincial government.
Critics claim the answer remains more reactive than preventative. “The state knew that heavy rain was coming, but flood defense and public health systems were not strengthened in time,” said an environmental analyst in Lahore. “Now we see avoidable diseases spread while officials are encrypted after injury control.”
Experts also point to climate change as a deterioration factor. Punjab has received 26% more rainfall in this MONSUN season compared to last year, according to the meteorological department, which exposes weaknesses in infrastructure and planning.
As Waters stagnates and the health issues prevalent, the question is whether relief operations can keep pace with the extent of the crisis. Currently, officials promise that “no patient will be untreated,” but survival opinions from flooding zones over Punjab tell a far more disturbing story of a public health disaster that brews below the surface.
