With the continued objective of making discussions on HIV & AIDS more acceptable in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, CWS-P/A’s initiatives range from raising awareness to providing communities with access to systems for necessary treatment and testing. Depending on identified needs and interest at the local level, CWS-P/A explores opportunities for sharing knowledge and building capacity with respect to HIV & AIDS. Most recently, CWS-P/A identified an opportunity with staff at the community health center in Badin, Sindh. Six health staff members participated in CWS-P/A’s orientation session that addressed basic information on HIV & AIDS, sexual health, rights, stigma, myths, and discrimination. The training also equipped participants with knowledge and confidence to further share information with community members.

With an average of forty-one deliveries per month in CWS-P/A’s Comprehensive Health Center (CHC) located in Sultan Poor District, Nangahar Province, Dr. Ferozan Hameed, Mother and Child Health Coordinator, shares her concerns about women’s health. “Often women lack folic acid and iron, and fruits and vegetables remain missing from their daily intake of food, but a lot of this is because of poverty.” The doctor states hypertension, iron deficiency, and anemia as the common health concerns among women in Afghanistan. “The choice of having between six and seven children is another contributor that is weakening women’s health.”

The meteorological department has forecasted widespread rain from Tuesday to Thursday in southern Balochistan and lower Sindh. With the onset of winter adding to the challenges of affected families, shelter, particularly winterized, remains greatly needed. The plight of affected families is also being worsened by sky-rocketing food prices. Recently the country has witnessed high prices in almost all of the basic essentials. Reports have also shown medicines in Pakistan costing much more than neighboring India.

Most of the major crops like cotton, rice, and sugar cane and vegetables like onion, chilies, and others grown during the summer season in Sindh are badly affected by the recent rains and the resulting floods. For this reason, the prices of vegetables have increased to levels out of the reach of ordinary people.According to the estimates presented by the finance minister on October 14, 2011 in the National Assembly, an overall 11.3 percent loss in the production of cotton has been noticed.

Church World Service-Pakistan/Afghanistan recently distributed food packages in Umerkot District, where Kareema, a food package recipient, shared her story of unfortunate losses. A thirty year old mother and widow, Kareema, with her seven children including a newborn, no longer has a home in which to live, no financial resources, and has debt. With unimaginable personal loss and the circumstances she and millions of other individuals face following the devastation across Sindh, Kareema and her children have a multitude of challenges ahead.

Two women with very different circumstances face the challenges of poverty and loss of what little they had during the 2011 rains in Sindh without their husbands. Sattu, a seventy year old widow, lives with her only daughter in a village called Vehoko. Shahida, a twenty-eight year old mother of three children, resides in Sadiqa Ram Village where she struggles to cope with her husband’s unexplained disappearance six years ago. The absence of their husbands makes these two women, the elder nearly three times the age of the younger, feel the challenges of living in the poverty-stricken, rural Sindh district of Umerkot more than women who have a little security and support from having husbands to help bear the burdens. If life was not hard enough for these women, the rains and flooding that affected their villages in 2011 damaged their homes and took away their few belongings.

Nearing three months since heavy monsoon rainfalls hit Pakistan’s southern province, affected families in Sindh are still in need of immediate life-saving assistance. With global funding remaining minimal, at least three million people remain in dire need of food, clean water, medicines, and adequate shelter.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said that assistance to more than 8.9 million people affected by floods in Sindh and Balochistan may come to a halt in November after depletion of relief supplies by the end of the current month.  Meanwhile, Pakistan’s economy may expand slower than forecast after floods devastated the nation’s southern region, a finance ministry official said. The economic growth rate may be 0.5 percentage point lower than the government target of 4.2 percent.

THATTA DISTRICT, SINDH, PAKISTAN: Floods this year again have created havoc and particularly for the communities residing in Mohammad Khan, Mirpurkhas, Tharparkar, Tando Allah Yar, Matyari, Badin, and Thatta districts. The catastrophe is undeniably a severe blow to the affected communities in Sindh Province, and the plight that survivors face is shared by Sakina, a fifty-five year of old woman.

It is fair to say that some development efforts of the past have been made at the expense of our environment. In the name of income generation and economic prosperity, natural resources have been exploited through activities like deforestation, mining operations, and off-shore drilling. While economic gains have been achieved through these efforts, they have almost always benefited only a small portion of the global population, leaving the majority to suffer with a lack of access to dwindling and polluted resources. In many countries, including Pakistan, development has assumed the form of industrialization in a relentless quest to increase exportable goods and open the country up to international investment. This tension between development efforts and environmental sustainability has led to a myth that pits efforts to improve human well-being against environmental stewardship, claiming that the two are in a constant opposition. In essence, the environment must suffer in order to improve human well-being: trees must be cut, minerals must be mined, and water-resources must be exploited. With the global population growing exponentially, and the once vast amount of natural resources being depleted at a rapid rate, we must ask ourselves a very important question; can development efforts be environmentally sustainable?

The Supreme Court has asked the Sindh government to detail the steps it has taken for the rehabilitation of flood survivors and present a report within three weeks. A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry resumed hearing of former parliamentarian Marvi Memon’s complaint on non-implementation of the flood inquiry commission’s recommendations on Monday.

As part of CWS-P/A’s role in assisting to promote Sphere initiatives in Asia, for the first time a Sphere Focal Point Forum in collaboration with Sphere Office Geneva was conducted in September 2011. Adhering to its role, CWS-P/A also recently offered a three-day training titled ‘Quality and Accountability Management Training: Introduction to Sphere and HAP standards.’

As best they can, with limited resources, humanitarian agencies continue to provide relief items to families throughout Sindh. Unfortunately, millions of people remain at high risk of food insecurity, disease, and vulnerabilities from a lack of adequate shelter. Over the past week, additional funds were committed toward the response including USD 17.6 million from the United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund. Unfortunately, the slow response prevents the humanitarian community from meeting immediate needs and continues to add misery for the millions direly requiring relief now.

CWS-P/A continues its work to provide communities across Pakistan with access to information on HIV & AIDS. Over the years, the organization came to realize the two-fold effect that information sharing has: increasing awareness within communities and providing a forum for open discussion. The second remains taboo in Pakistani society.

During the summer months, CWS-P/A’s rehabilitation intervention included the distribution of livestock to flood affected farming families. In addition to animal distribution, CWS-P/A emphasized components of livestock rearing that enable community owned sustainability of the intervention. These efforts included improved fodder as well as production and marketing of dairy products. In this regard, a one-day training session on silage making was held. Known as a conserved form of crop that is fed to cattle during the winter months, silage tends to be preferred by livestock to hay and is of higher nutritive value.  Additionally, silage which is made under natural acidic conditions works as the major diet of livestock throughout the winter season.

The United Nations warned on Monday that the international community had failed to respond to the latest flooding crisis in Pakistan, leaving three million people in urgent need of food handouts. “Somehow the present flooding and the humanitarian impact of the present flooding have not yet picked the interest and focus of the world,” said Ramiro Lopes da Silva, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme. “If we have no resources, we have no response,” he told a news conference in Islamabad after visiting the flood-hit areas of Sindh. On Sept 18, the United Nations led an appeal for $357 million in emergency funding to shore up rescue and relief efforts for millions of affected people after floods swept away houses and farmland in the province. Various sources quote that the Appeal is only 4 to 6 percent funded.

The calls for assistance are strong in Islamabad as millions of flood and rain affected people in Sindh remain without shelter and without the necessary food, healthcare, and safe drinking water to survive the coming months. On Saturday, September 30, the United Nations warned that diminishing relief items will soon be unavailable unless the international community comes forward and donates to the Rapid Response Plan, which is only 6% funded.

It has been more than a month since the onset of monsoon and subsequent flooding, but relief organizations say that thousands of villages remain inaccessible. While there are conflicting reports, the situation on the ground is “extremely tragic.” Between 7 and 10 feet of water is still standing in Badin, Mirpurkhas, and Sanghar.