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PAKISTAN

UN holds emergency session to ramp up Pakistan aid

United Nations member states are on Thursday gathering for an emergency session to raise more financial aid for Pakistan amid criticism the global flood response has fallen far short. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the special session of the General Assembly after visiting Pakistan to assess the disaster.

Reuters
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About six million survivors are dependent on humanitarian assistance to survive, and are in desperate need of food, shelter and clean drinking water.

Meanwhile concerns growing over potential outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and hepatitis.

Thursday's emergency UN session in New York aims to hasten the delivery of aid to Pakistan, which has received just over half of the 460 million dollars appealled for last week.

At least 36 speakers, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and their counterparts from Belgium, Canada and Denmark, will take the floor.

Clinton is expected to announce extra US aid, currently at 90 million dollars.

Meanwhile Senator John Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-authored a record 7.5 billion-dollar aid bill for Pakistan, will on Thursday hold talks with Pakistani leaders and is due to visit flood-hit areas.

The US government said it could divert part of its 7.5 billion dollar non-military aid programme for Pakistan into short-term relief.

The European Union has also doubled its commitment to 70 million euros.

The United Nations has described Pakistan's worst humanitarian crisis as one of the world's biggest disasters.

The Asian Development Bank is reportedly ready to offer a two-billion-dollar emergency loan to repair the nation's damaged infrastructure and the World Bank has promised to lend 900 million dollars.

Although weather forecasters say the monsoon systems are easing off and water levels receding, the fallout from three weeks of devastating floods is likely to last years.

At camps for displaced people across the country, survivors are battling with crippling heat, miserable sanitation and swarms of mosquitoes.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Thursday that water purification tablets are now being distributed and that improved funding means that almost 2.6 million people have now been given clean water. 

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