Healthier Lives for Pakistan’s Flood Victims

“In Pakistan we have almost two parallel societies,” says Afsheen Ahmed, director of the Pakistan Voluntary Health and Nutrition Association (PAVHNA) and CEDPA alumna. “We have one society where you have highly educated women…and then there’s the [population] who still don’t have access to education, health or basic facilities.”

In Pakistan, 58 percent of women are illiterate, one in every 250 women die in childbirth and more than 22 percent of the 173.2 million people who make up the population live below the poverty line.

The devastating floods at the end of the summer of 2010 exacerbated the situation. One out of every 8.5 Pakistanis was impacted by the deluges. Refugees from the floods fled to Karachi. Their livelihoods washed away by the flood waters, they began to establish camps in the city’s surrounding villages.

“As the population increases, if you cannot provide the basic facilities, the danger is you tend to slide into creating [more] poverty, and … all these other addendum issues,” explains Afsheen.

The healthcare situation in the suburban villages around Karachi was bad before the floods. Sanitation and water facilities were minimal at best. Mobility was difficult, especially for women, as public transportation was and continues to be infrequent, and women are not permitted to travel alone.

Afsheen Ahmed continues to work to ensure that everyone in Pakistan has access to health services.

In July of 2010, before the floods, CEDPA and PAVHNA teamed together, with a small grant from the Rapidan Foundation, to implement a program to increase access to reproductive health services in two of the villages surrounding the city.

Only one health care center, the Malir Medical and Surgical Center, serviced the villages in the area, and, due to the economic downturn, it had lost its subsidized funding from the government. The program’s initial strategy was to use the Rapidan funds to help the clinic stay open and reach more villagers by establishing monthly mobile health centers that would alternate between the two villages, providing maternal mortality prevention education and outreach, assessing patients’ needs, and referring more complicated cases to the clinic.

However, when the floods hit, the needs of the communities shifted and increased. Using the limited resources, the program was able to add an additional mobile health center at the refugee camp, provide more basic medical services in addition to the reproductive health services at the centers and offer transportation from the mobile clinic to the medical center.

While adding the extra services strained the already tight budget, it also proved to be an opportunity for unparalleled education efforts. Clinic workers were able to provide education about reproductive health services and family planning counseling to the residents of the refugee camp, people they normally would not have been able to reach.

In addition, patients were offered services and treatment in respiratory problems, pediatrics, hepatitis, diabetes, tuberculoses, skin disease and antenatal care. Over the course of five months, the program was able to offer services to 150 to 200 patients a day at each mobile health center, totaling close to 10,000 patients. The majority were at the refugee camps.

At the moment, the partnership is seeking additional funding to continue offering health services to the communities in this area.

"It is imperative that these day-to-day services are provided on an ongoing basis," says Afsheen. "One of the main reasons for Pakistan's dismal health and social indicators is...we fail to build on success and take it further. We are very grateful to Rapidan for the opportunity to continue offering desperately needed primary and reproductive health services in one of the most deprived areas of Karachi."

Learn more about CEDPA’s work in reproductive health.

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