Pakistan: Floods leave women struggling in relief camps

Waiting for the water that swallowed their homes to recede, women have limited access to sanitary pads and essential medicines, including pregnancy-related care

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In a former classroom, now a makeshift relief camp, pregnant women take refuge from the floods that have ravaged eastern Pakistan, their bodies aching, eyes heavy with exhaustion and silent despair.

Waiting for the water that swallowed their homes to recede, women in Chung, a settlement on Lahore's outskirts, have limited access to sanitary pads and essential medicines, including pregnancy-related care.

Shumaila Riaz, 19-years-old and seven months pregnant with her first child, spent the past four days in the relief camp, enduring pregnancy cramps.

"I wanted to think about the child I am going to have, but now, I am not even certain about my own future," she told AFP.

Clad in dirty clothes they have worn for days and with unbrushed hair, women huddle in the overcrowded school hosting more than 2,000 people, surrounded by mud and stagnant rainwater.

"My body aches a lot and I can’t get the medicines I want here," said 19-year-old Fatima, mother to a one-year-old daughter and four months pregnant.