The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has awarded a grant of US$100,000 to the international charity WaterAid, in response to the overwhelming need generated by the recent floods in Pakistan. This year the monsoon rains have been torrential, causing rivers to break their banks and flood vast tracts of land. The deluge has engulfed everything across 62,000 square miles, a huge area the size of England.

More than 1,700 victims have lost their lives and as many as 20 million people have been significantly affected, their everyday environment rendered completely uninhabitable. Entire villages, schools, health clinics, fields of crops and livestock, stores of food stockpiled to feed thousands through the lean winter months—all have been submerged by the raging waters.

Water is the problem and also a key part of the solution. Abdul Hafeez, WaterAid’s Programme Manager in Pakistan, observes that, “In any disaster, the most immediate and pressing challenge, and the greatest threat, is access to clean drinking water.” The TPRF grant will help enable the emergency distribution of clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene facilities to the displaced communities.

A month after the rains began, the massive scale of the disaster has become all too apparent. The flood zone stretches the length of Pakistan, from the northwest down through the Punjab to the southern province of Sindh, where the River Indus again breached its banks in late August. Up to 800,000 people have been displaced just in the past few days after fresh flooding in the Dadu district of Sindh.

Thousands are living in relief camps or in makeshift shelters by the roadside waiting for the waters to recede. The efforts of those delivering international aid are being hampered by radical damage to the country’s basic infrastructure. The water has swept away roads, bridges and communication networks.

Now a new crisis looms with the serious threat of the spread of diseases like cholera, malaria, debilitating diarrhea, and respiratory infections. The TPRF grant will support WaterAid’s distribution of safe water by tanker as an interim measure, along with 4,500 hygiene kits, 20,000 water purification tablets and 5,000 packets of Oral Rehydration Salts for diarrhea treatment to alleviate the immediate impact of the floods. In the longer term, the ongoing availability of safe water will be assured by hygiene education and the rehabilitation of drinking water sources and sanitation facilities.

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Photographs Courtesy of WaterAid