Pakistan floods cause 'huge losses' to crops 
Children bear brunt of Pakistan flood disaster
Updated 3 hours 30 minutes ago
"An Australian Defence Force team has begun treating its first patients in Pakistan, where millions are homeless and there are growing fears about an outbreak of cholera in filthy refugee camps.
The death toll and number of people affected by the Pakistani floods are both expected to jump, but it is becoming clear that children are bearing the brunt of the disaster.
The Australian Medical Task Force in Kot Addu, in southern Punjab province, will provide maternal and children's health, as well as primary health care to 200 patients a day.
Ronnie Taylor, a Darwin-based nurse, treated her first patients at Camp Cockatoo over the weekend.
"I think it's what we expected to see so far, as far as infectious diseases and paediatric cases are concerned," she said in a statement released by the ADF.
"Treating my first patient here was excellent, a really good experience. People seem really happy to see us and there is a huge, huge need here."
Pakistan is now entering its fourth week in flood, and millions are still without food and shelter across the country.
Aid workers have described how parents saw their children washed away when flood waters hit villages and now, young survivors are suffering from disease and hunger in filthy camps.
World Vision Australia's director of policy and programs, Connie Lenneberg, has just returned from Pakistan, where around 6 million people are still homeless.
Ms Lenneberg has told ABC's Radio Australia that the flood zone in Pakistan covers the same area as two-thirds of Victoria, and much of it is still under metres of water.
She says the death toll of 1,600 people has not been updated for more than three weeks and it is expected to rise dramatically.
"The communities that I visited talked about significant loss of life as the floods came through in the night. They came through with great force and velocity," she said.
"Many communities had an hour in the middle of the night to prepare.
"People spoke particularly about losing children, about little ones being washed away in the mayhem that was happening."
Ms Lenneberg says with stagnant water everywhere, little food and shelter, health is the next catastrophe for Pakistan.
She says the health of children is on a knife edge.
"These tiny little children living in very crowded camps and seeing their health deteriorating, seeing them with skin disorders, covered in boils, with diarrhoea," she said.
"These children were malnourished and vulnerable to begin with, so we are hearing of more and more deaths occurring.
"Seeing children who are one-year-old, 18 months, who look like they're four or five months old. They're so fragile."
Cholera fears
"Ms Lenneberg says authorities now fear Pakistan could be on the brink of an outbreak of cholera.
"No one's naming it that [cholera] yet because the tests are quite complicated, but the government is setting out 67 intensive care diarrhoea isolation wards, so it is an enormous risk," she said.
"We're hearing from MSF [
Medecins Sans Frontieres] for example, in some of their clinics 50 per cent of the cases they're seeing are acute diarrhoea."
Meanwhile, aid is trickling through to some of the 20 million Pakistanis affected by the floods, but locals are angry that the Pakistani government has not done more to help.
Ms Lenneberg has described visiting some towns and villages in central Pakistan where the flood waters are still so high that only the tops of palm trees are visible above the water.
In some areas further north, the water is starting to recede and locals are rebuilding.
Ms Lenneberg says the military has so far played an important role in supporting communities.
"What we have seen is the Pakistan military really step in and make a real difference putting up tents and it's really changed the perspective of the way they're seen by their own community," she said.
"But certainly people are not happy with the way the government been able to respond."
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, is a secular humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization best known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries facing endemic disease.
Médecins Sans Frontières was created in 1971 by a small group of French doctors in the aftermath of the Biafra secession, who believed that all people have the right to medical care regardless of race, religion, creed or political affiliation, and that the needs of these people outweigh respect for national borders..."
