The emergency ward at the main government hospital in Sehwan, a small town in southern Pakistan, is overwhelmed.
On a recent visit, Reuters witnessed hundreds of people crammed into rooms and corridors, desperately seeking treatment for malaria and other illnesses that are spreading fast after the country's worst floods in decades.
Most of the estimated 300-400 patients arriving at his clinic each morning, many of them children, are suffering from malaria and diarrhoea, although with winter approaching, Ahmed fears other illnesses will become more common. Stagnant floodwaters, spread over hundreds of square kilometres , may take two to six months to recede in some places, and have already led to widespread cases of skin and eye infections, diarrhoea, malaria, typhoid and dengue fever.. With its economy in crisis, propped up by loans from the International Monetary Fund, it does not have the resources to cope with the longer term effects of the flooding.
Anticipating the risk of disease outbreaks after the rescue and relief phase of the floods, the Sindh government is trying to hire more than 5,000 health professionals on a temporary basis in districts most at risk. In the hospital ward in Sehwan, a young man with a high fever was having fits on a bed outside the main emergency room. His mother ran to Ahmed, who attended the patient and asked a male nurse to place cold pads on his forehead.
Jagan Shahani's daughter fell unconscious after getting a fever around a week ago. He used a boat to get out of his flooded village of Bhajara and flagged down a car on the nearby road that took them to Sehwan.
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