Waterborne diseases pose threat in Pakistan as floods strike

Hundreds of thousands of people are living in the open as large tracts of India, Pakistan, and China have been struck by lethal floods after weeks of torrential monsoon weather and a direct hit from a tropical cyclone on Pakistan's southern coast.

Hardest hit is Pakistan. Cyclone Yemyin narrowly missed Karachi on 26 June, just three days after the city was struck by another storm that caused widespread damage and killed 228 people. The cyclone instead hit land in the province of Balochistan, one of Pakistan's most deprived areas.

The Balochistan relief commissioner, Khuda Bakhsh Baloch, says that roughly 200 000 …