WARNING: SOME OF THE IMAGES AND VIDEO IN THIS STORY ARE DISTURBING
Sindh province, Pakistan
CNN
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The baby sleeps listlessly on the hospital bed, her frail and dehydrated body fighting for survival. Next to her lies a motionless infant wrapped in a white cloth, who died just minutes earlier.
One hour later, another child succumbs to her illness. Her weeping grandmother watches in despair as doctors also wrap her in white.
The children died from cholera, an acute diarrheal illness contracted by drinking water contaminated with bacteria.
And they were not the only ones.
More than 10 children die every day at the Mother and Child Healthcare Hospital in Pakistan’s Sindh province alone, according to doctors at the facility – all from water-related ailments stemming from this summer’s devastating floods that submerged a third of the country.
Dozens more children sleep cramped together on beds in the facility’s emergency room; some unconscious from their illness, others crying in pain. Pale and lethargic, their protruding ribs and bulging eyes are all symptoms of malnourishment.
Exhausted parents wait in the room next door in deafening silence. Numb and defeated, they do not know if their child will make it out of the hospital alive.
“The floods came and the rain fell. And then our patients came in like the floods,” said Dr. Nazia Urooj, physician in-charge at the hospital’s children emergency unit.
This is the face of a near unprecedented health crisis unfolding across Pakistan – but for many, help is not arriving. And aid groups warn the situation will only get worse if the international community doesn’t act now.
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Source : cnn
