By Our Reporter

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: Calling for urgently providing clean drinking water for the flood victims, Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said its medical teams have so far treated 60,000 patients, some 15,000 of them with severe diarrhoea.

The society has provided free medicines and ambulance service to the patients of diarrhoea and waterborne diseases besides water purification tablets.

The PRCS 31 health teams in collaboration with International Federation of Red Cross, Red Crescent Societies, and International Committee of Red Cross are working in worst affected areas of southern Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, says a press release on Sunday. The PRCS has set up water filtration plants in southern Punjab and Sindh with a capacity of one million liters clean drinking water per day.

“We are stepping up our efforts to provide drinking water and sanitation facilities to flood-displaced people who are in camps and in improvised settlements around in southern Punjab,” said Senator Nilofar Bakhtiar, chairperson PRCS. She said PRCS water and sanitation teams were reactivating equipment from former Spanish Red Cross water and sanitation Emergency Response Units, first shipped to Pakistan as part of the international response to the 2007 floods, and more has been flown in from Spain.

One unit, trucked from Karachi, has been set up in Shikarpur town near a flyover where about 2,000 people are sleeping in Red Crescent tents and pumping up to 20,000 litres per day as the people were drinking dirty water from a lake.

“There’s no relief effort more vital after a flood than safe water. We will be establishing at least four more units with a capacity of 200000 litres per day with Spanish-made purification equipment over the next few days,” Senator Bakhtiar said.

She said another PRCS team supported by delegates from the Austrian and Swedish Red Cross would be providing clean water for up to 40,000 people in two districts of Punjab in couple of days. She said PRCS would be providing 400,000 litres of clean drinking water per day to the flood victims.

She said that PRCS is providing relief and medical cover to over 2.1 million people across the country out. She said PRCS has set up zonal offices in the affected areas to expedite relief work. “Our staff teams and volunteers are trying their best to reach out to victims everywhere.”

She said it was the biggest natural disaster Pakistan has witnessed, adding that all organizations were trying to help the victims, but regretted lack of resources was hindering relief efforts. “We have asked the International Committee of Red Cross for helicopters to air lift relief items where there is no access.”