The unsuspecting and innocuous expendables scrambled to safety, as the rain pours down thickly from the sky. Perched on mounds, they saw the ruthless waves wash away their homes, livestock and loved ones who couldn’t climb to safety. The scenes from the flood hit areas are heart wrenching.
To imagine living, palpable humans suffering apocalypse for weeks while TV channels competed for ratings on prime-time by playing political charades. What really turned our heads though? Was it the mother mourning her child swept away by the cruel waves or the father who couldn’t find a shroud for his five years old?
Every year, the unrelenting monsoon brings death and despair, even in urban centres and among the affluent. From light drizzle to heavy downpour, our cityscape is never prepared for what’s coming. Passersby get electrocuted, fall down sewerage holes, underpasses get flooded, power shuts down. The cities are dragged almost a decade back just with the first splash of the season. Yet, nothing improves, neither our infrastructure nor our habits.
While our cities can barely hold up against the water works, the rural areas never stood a chance in the face of a torrential outburst of recent proportion. The water ruthlessly devoured anything and everything that lay in its path.
We are currently faced by a national crisis that has claimed many lives and has countless displaced. If only numbers could define the tragedy befalling the ill-fated land and its people? Though the rescue missions are picking up pace, there’s a bigger disaster lurking once these floodwaters recede.
Multitudes of water and airborne diseases, like diarrhoea, dysentry, malaria, dengue, are a ticking time bomb. With millions of people displaced, exposed to dirty, infested floodwaters, and unhygienic conditions, the spread of contagious infections remains an impending threat. It is only a matter of time till the mushroom cloud explodes if not defused timely. Health sector needs to be taken onboard actively while the rescue drives are underway.
Post-disaster health and sanitation management should be strategically planned with frontline health providers, epidemiologists and public health officials on board. With thousands of acres of land inundated with record high levels of stagnant and contaminated water, the stage is set for multiple infectious disease outbreaks, a much greater catastrophe in the making.
Historically, urban centres such as Karachi have been the hotbeds of refugee influx in the aftermath of natural disasters. An emergency health delivery plan needs to be initiated at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) hotspots. Setting up emergency medical camps and makeshift clinics in pre-identified target areas can provide timely treatment to the sick, and greatly prevent the radius of disease spread, especially in urban centres that will inevitably host the refugees.
If this goes unchecked, the burden of these imported infections will hit the health system hard. Our emergency rooms and hospital services are as it is in embarrassing state of affairs. Ill equipped, they barely address the local health needs. The healthcare providers are left helpless on disease frontlines with scraps to work with. This brings back memories of touching (read petty) displays of government officials handing out PPE among hospital staff at the outset of the pandemic under close media watch, as if granting a favour. The nobility of the profession is no indemnity for the human that dons the scrubs. Let’s keep this discussion for another day, though.
We are not just suffering the effects of climate change but the relentless, callousness of short sighted and myopic people of authority. The climate did not change overnight and boo-ed the living day lights out of the unprepared and ill-equipped disaster management machinery. Nature had been playing scintillating teasers of the climatic D-Day. Sadly, to no avail. Climate, health, education aren’t our priorities. All we know best is to sit through a disaster and then remind the ‘Mukhayyar hazraat’ to do their civil duty.
God knows the revelations that await us once these floodwaters recede beneath the lands that were once fertile and yielding. Will the sight of ravaged crop, carcasses and corpses twitch even an eyebrow?
Global warming is an established reality that the whole world needs to wake up to. Pre-emptive natural disaster management is the need of the hour. Our budgets need to reflect these diversified priorities in a world becoming more inhospitable by the day. If only our heartbeat ticked with the stock market and oil prices, we would pay more attention.
The climatic changes will influence health states in more ways than we can imagine. The newer climatic thresholds will test our bodies’ acclimatisation capacity, emergence of prehistoric and yet undetermined microbes will challenge our immune systems, famines and scarce natural resources will hurl humanity into hunger games of sorts. The picture isn’t pretty. We need enlightened leadership in these bleak times.
Disasters are best managed before they even occur. As the mighty Indus prepares for another swell, this is the time to act lest there remains no mound to climb.
To imagine living, palpable humans suffering apocalypse for weeks while TV channels competed for ratings on prime-time by playing political charades. What really turned our heads though? Was it the mother mourning her child swept away by the cruel waves or the father who couldn’t find a shroud for his five years old?
Every year, the unrelenting monsoon brings death and despair, even in urban centres and among the affluent. From light drizzle to heavy downpour, our cityscape is never prepared for what’s coming. Passersby get electrocuted, fall down sewerage holes, underpasses get flooded, power shuts down. The cities are dragged almost a decade back just with the first splash of the season. Yet, nothing improves, neither our infrastructure nor our habits.
While our cities can barely hold up against the water works, the rural areas never stood a chance in the face of a torrential outburst of recent proportion. The water ruthlessly devoured anything and everything that lay in its path.
We are currently faced by a national crisis that has claimed many lives and has countless displaced. If only numbers could define the tragedy befalling the ill-fated land and its people? Though the rescue missions are picking up pace, there’s a bigger disaster lurking once these floodwaters recede.
Setting up emergency medical camps and makeshift clinics in pre-identified target areas can provide timely treatment to the sick, and greatly prevent the radius of disease spread, especially in urban centres that will inevitably host the refugees.
Multitudes of water and airborne diseases, like diarrhoea, dysentry, malaria, dengue, are a ticking time bomb. With millions of people displaced, exposed to dirty, infested floodwaters, and unhygienic conditions, the spread of contagious infections remains an impending threat. It is only a matter of time till the mushroom cloud explodes if not defused timely. Health sector needs to be taken onboard actively while the rescue drives are underway.
Post-disaster health and sanitation management should be strategically planned with frontline health providers, epidemiologists and public health officials on board. With thousands of acres of land inundated with record high levels of stagnant and contaminated water, the stage is set for multiple infectious disease outbreaks, a much greater catastrophe in the making.
Historically, urban centres such as Karachi have been the hotbeds of refugee influx in the aftermath of natural disasters. An emergency health delivery plan needs to be initiated at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) hotspots. Setting up emergency medical camps and makeshift clinics in pre-identified target areas can provide timely treatment to the sick, and greatly prevent the radius of disease spread, especially in urban centres that will inevitably host the refugees.
If this goes unchecked, the burden of these imported infections will hit the health system hard. Our emergency rooms and hospital services are as it is in embarrassing state of affairs. Ill equipped, they barely address the local health needs. The healthcare providers are left helpless on disease frontlines with scraps to work with. This brings back memories of touching (read petty) displays of government officials handing out PPE among hospital staff at the outset of the pandemic under close media watch, as if granting a favour. The nobility of the profession is no indemnity for the human that dons the scrubs. Let’s keep this discussion for another day, though.
Disasters are best managed before they even occur. As the mighty Indus prepares for another swell, this is the time to act lest there remains no mound to climb.
We are not just suffering the effects of climate change but the relentless, callousness of short sighted and myopic people of authority. The climate did not change overnight and boo-ed the living day lights out of the unprepared and ill-equipped disaster management machinery. Nature had been playing scintillating teasers of the climatic D-Day. Sadly, to no avail. Climate, health, education aren’t our priorities. All we know best is to sit through a disaster and then remind the ‘Mukhayyar hazraat’ to do their civil duty.
God knows the revelations that await us once these floodwaters recede beneath the lands that were once fertile and yielding. Will the sight of ravaged crop, carcasses and corpses twitch even an eyebrow?
Global warming is an established reality that the whole world needs to wake up to. Pre-emptive natural disaster management is the need of the hour. Our budgets need to reflect these diversified priorities in a world becoming more inhospitable by the day. If only our heartbeat ticked with the stock market and oil prices, we would pay more attention.
The climatic changes will influence health states in more ways than we can imagine. The newer climatic thresholds will test our bodies’ acclimatisation capacity, emergence of prehistoric and yet undetermined microbes will challenge our immune systems, famines and scarce natural resources will hurl humanity into hunger games of sorts. The picture isn’t pretty. We need enlightened leadership in these bleak times.
Disasters are best managed before they even occur. As the mighty Indus prepares for another swell, this is the time to act lest there remains no mound to climb.