As the Jesuits launched an emergency appeal for the millions of Pakistanis affected by flooding, an Australian Columban priest braced his Hyderabad community for the oncoming devastation.
Since flooding began in Pakistan on 22 July, around 1,600 people are believed to have died and up to 20 million people have been left homeless in the wake of the disaster. The World Health Organisation (WHO) predicts that as many as 300,000 people may contract cholera and seven million will suffer from diarrhoea.
Jesuit Fr Jacob Fernando, a Sri Lankan missionary based in Pakistan, says that although food and clothing have been collected in the city of Rawalpindi, they cannot be dispersed in Gilgat because the road has been washed away.
'The army is busy repairing the roads, but nothing can pass through for weeks. All relief goods are airlifted by the army. There is a desperate need for food'.
The Director of Jesuit Mission, Fr Phil Crotty SJ, said through the work of Fr Renato Zecchin and the other Jesuits working in Lahore, Jesuit Mission will provide support to flood affected families struggling to get their lives back to normal.
Pakistan's flood waters are not expected to recede until the end of August. Existing river torrents were still heading to major cities such as Hyderabad and Sukkur in the south and could yet cause more floods.
Australian, Father Robert McCulloch and eight other Columban priests and lay missionaries in the Hyderabad area are helping people brace for the devastation and will be working to help them recover.
"Everything on the ground floor of St. Elizabeth Hospital, of which I am chairman, has gone to the first floor," Father McCulloch said.
"We will lose our entire x-ray department and its equipment and the operating theatres will be horribly affected. Some equipment cannot be removed. Our recently installed 135 KVA (Kilo Volt Ampere) generator will be ruined. And the building itself! I cannot begin to think properly about it all."
Father McCulloch explained the importance of St Elizabeth's to poor people in the area.
"Along the Indus River south of Hyderabad there are 18,000 people for whom St Elizabeth's is the sole medical provider. Many of these people are, in practice, agricultural slaves, who work the land for powerful absentee landlords. Unfortunately, the awful plight of these people is often forgotten by government relief efforts and even by aid agencies. We at St Elizabeth's will have to do what we can to help them and look after them."
Father McCulloch said the homes of thousands of ordinary struggling families have been destroyed in the north of Pakistan, and this was what the people of Hyderabad were now facing.
He said funds would be needed to reconstruct after the floods recede and to help people put their lives back together.
"People will have immediate medical needs, especially impoverished women who have gone through childbirth in terrible flood circumstances. They live in grinding poverty which is made worse by this awful disaster."
Caroline Ryan RSM, Institute Vice-President, Sisters of Mercy Australia, said that since the Institute began its mission in Pakistan, Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea have had particular interest in the well-being of the people of that country.
"At this time we unite with them in prayer and solidarity. May their desperate needs created by the devastating floods be effectively addressed through the compassion of the worldwide community and the justice of their own government."
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