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ISLAMABAD (AP) — The World Bank said it will provide about $2 billion in aid to Pakistan, which has been ravaged by floods this year and killed more than 1,600 people, in its biggest aid pledge to date.
This year’s unprecedented monsoon rains and floods — which many experts attribute to climate change — have also injured about 13,000 people across the country since mid-June.
The floods have displaced millions of people, destroyed crops, half a million homes and thousands of kilometers (miles) of roads.
The World Bank’s vice president for South Asia, Martin Raiser, announced the pledge in an overnight statement after wrapping up his first official visit to the country on Saturday.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and livelihoods from the devastating floods, and we are working with the federal and provincial governments to provide immediate relief to those hardest hit,” he said.
Reiser met with the federal minister and the chief minister of the worst-affected southern Sindh province, where he toured the worst-hit metropolitan area.
The province has set up thousands of makeshift medical camps for flood survivors, and the National Disaster Management Agency says outbreaks of typhoid, malaria and dengue fever there have killed at least 300 people.
The death toll prompted the World Health Organization to sound the alarm on a “second disaster” last week, with doctors on the scene scrambling to battle the outbreak.
“As an immediate response, we are repurposing funds from existing World Bank-funded projects to support urgent needs in health, food, shelter, rehabilitation and cash transfers,” Reiser said.
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