A team of the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) along the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) mission visited flood-hit areas in South Punjab to assess the issues being faced by women and girls especially women with disabilities in camps.
According a press release issued here on Monday, the team visited DG Khan and Rajanpur’s highly affected areas including Mangrotha Maghrib, one of the most highly affected areas of Taunsa and Dera Ghazi Khan, where 150 women and children have severely been affected by the recent floods.
With the support of UNFPA, more than 250 women received dignitary kits, which included essential hygiene items to help ease the lack of women-friendly sanitation needs.
Deputy commissioners of DG Khan and Rajanpur gave a detailed briefing to the team on health and social welfare initiatives and post-flood activities being carried out by various departments and NGOs in the two districts. The visiting team also collected data related to women, including the number of pregnant women, the number of deliveries and births as well as current conditions of their health and social well-being.
NCSW Chairperson Nilofar Bakhtiar lauded the efforts of the district administrations. She, however, highlighted the issues of lack of designated washroom facilities for women, coupled with the shortage of medicine, health services and malnutrition, which has further exacerbated the situation in the flood-hit areas.
She called for the need of support of relevant departments to ensure regular visits by lady health workers at the Fazilpur camp besides ensuring the availability of medicine nutritional supplements and designed latrines for women.
The NCSW chairperson emphasized the need to work on family planning by relevant authorities, donors and NGOs on a priority basis. She also said that as the affected families were relocating to their damaged homes, they must get the same attention to have proper shelter and basic needs at home to save them from facing miserable conditions as the winter is fast approaching.
A medical camp was as set up to provide free medical services to pregnant women and girls at one of the camps.
The team also visited a very remote area in Rajanpur where the UNFPA with its partner ACT, is opening a women and girls’ friendly space.
The NCSW chairperson emphasised the importance of engaging women and adolescent girls to have their access the psycho-social support as well as information and services of family planning.
She highlighted the fact that “there is much that is still needed to be done in the aftermath of the devastating floods, and through close collaboration and compressive planning to help the women of South Punjab to recover and stand on their foot again.
