HPG Working Papers

Pakistan has one of South Asia’s highest rates of urbanisation and is one of the world’s largest host countries for refugees, including an estimated 2.7 million Afghans. In recent years it has also seen increasing numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) due to conflict and disasters. Peshawar, the capital of KP province, has become one of the largest recipient cities for refugees and IDPs in South Asia. It is also one of the poorest: an estimated 29% of KP’s population lives in poverty (UNDP, 2012).

MIRPURKHAS, May 23: Amid widespread complaints of an acute shortage of irrigation water in Sukkur and Mirpurkhas divisions, various organisations of growers, peasants and tillers have urged the government to release adequate water in canals, distributaries and channels to save the Kharif crop.

Asif Choudary

LAHORE: All four provincial governments have come up with similar views on the 2012 measles outbreak, as they say “devolution of EPI functions to provinces, especially procurement of vaccines” is one of the key factors responsible for low coverage, which resulted in death of 413 children last year.

WHO: John Ging (OCHA), Ted Chaiban (UNICEF), David Kaatrud (WFP),
Dominique Burgeon (FAO), Neil Buhne (UNDP), Mabingue Ngom (UNFPA), Mohammed Abdiker (IOM) and Mike Bowers (MercyCorps)

WHAT: Mission to Afghanistan and Pakistan

WHEN: 26 May to 1 June 2013

WHERE: Kabul, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad and Sindh

Emergency Directors from United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners will travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan from 26 May to 1 June.

• A wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) case has been confirmed in Kenya, the first WPV in the country since July 2011, with onset of paralysis 30 April. The location is a refugee camp in the Dadaab area, close to the border with Somalia, where a child was paralysed by polio near the capital Mogadishu on 18 April. Outbreak response activities are being planned. See ‘Horn of Africa’ section for more.

By Wisal Yousafzai

PESHAWAR: As many as twenty-four children died of diarrhea and gastroenteritis in the month of May only in just Lady Reading and Khyber Teaching hospitals in Peshawar. This is the story of two hospitals in one city. One can guess what the figures would be if data from all over the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is collected.

KARACHI, May 22 2013 (IPS) - Staring out at his golden wheat field with satisfaction, 50-year old Alamgir Akbar says with a sigh of relief: “We’ve had a good crop this season.”

The farmer has waited a long time to utter those words. A resident of a small rural community on the outskirts of the Ucchali village in the Soan Valley, a 737-square-metre expanse of farmland in the Khushab district of Pakistan’s Punjab province, he has spent five years battling the impacts of a prolonged drought.

Peshawar – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today handed over medical and information technology equipment worth over 7.4 million rupees to the Health Department, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The donation is designed to boost the quality of nutrition and healthcare services provided in seven key Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, and includes weighing scales, delivery tables, oxygen cylinders and emergency lights, as well as computers and printers.

Highlights

• Following displacements from the Tirah Valley in Khyber Agency, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in March and April, humanitarian partners are now registering and providing assistance to families displaced from central Kurram Agency in FATA, who, since mid-May have fled their homes due to the Government of Pakistan’s security operations against armed non-state actors.