The vio­lence in Pak­istan has cre­ated a health emer­gency for preg­nant and new moth­ers within refugee camps in the coun­try. 69,000 preg­nant women have been forced out of north­west Pak­istan since the fight­ing began in April. Doc­tors within the refugee camps say the new moth­ers face severe health and nutri­tion problems.

From the IPS, Ash­faq Yusufzai reports on the dis­placed mothers.

“Our doc­tors had exam­ined about 191 new­born chil­dren of whom 144 were under­weight and 125 severely mal­nour­ished,” says Dr Abdul Hameed, PPA pres­i­dent. There is severe over­crowd­ing, he con­firms. Two or three chil­dren can be admit­ted on each bed. Nei­ther are there labour rooms to han­dle delivery-related com­pli­ca­tions, he adds.

“The sit­u­a­tion could slip out of con­trol if imme­di­ate mea­sures regard­ing strength­en­ing of child­care in the camps aren’t ini­ti­ated,” he told IPS.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Human­i­tar­ian Affairs and Emer­gency Relief Coor­di­na­tor, John Holmes, who is on a visit to Pak­istan, is reported say­ing, “We still need to do more to help (inter­nally dis­placed) peo­ple both now and in the com­ing months.” Holmes who has vis­ited refugees in camps in Peshawar, Mar­dan and Swabi, has trav­eled to Buner dis­trict, Thursday.

Anto­nio Guter­res, U.N. High Com­mis­sioner for Refugees, has described the mas­sive dis­place­ment of Pak­istani civil­ians because of the esca­lat­ing fight­ing between Pak­istani forces and Tal­iban mil­i­tants as “the most chal­leng­ing pro­tec­tion cri­sis since Rwanda [in the mid-1990s].”

“My son has severe diar­rhoea. There is no improve­ment. He is pale, and not respond­ing to breast­feed­ing,” Jamala Bibi of Buner in the Shah Man­soor camp, Swabi, told this reporter on May 20.

Pak­istan has a pop­u­la­tion of 160.9 mil­lion, which is grow­ing at a rate of 1.8 per­cent. Accord­ing to observers, the coun­try is unlikely to meet goal 4 and 5 of the Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals (MDGs), which calls for reduc­ing child mor­tal­ity and improv­ing mater­nal health respec­tively, by 15 to 50 per­cent by 2015.

Every fam­ily in the Malakand region has at least five or more chil­dren. The con­ser­v­a­tive Islamic groups allied to the Tal­iban, who made Dir, Swat and Buner their strong­hold two years ago, tar­geted non gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions (NGOs) work­ing with the com­mu­nity on repro­duc­tive health goals. Their field work­ers were kid­napped and the NGOs threat­ened with dire con­se­quences if they did not pull out of these districts.

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