Disasters Emergency Committee
http://www.dec.org.uk/

The Disasters Emergency Committee - www.dec.org.uk - is an umbrella group of UK aid organisations - including Action Aid, British Red Cross and Oxfam - working to provide clean water, food and shelter to hundreds of thousands of victims of the floods.

To call from the UK, dial 0870 60 60 900. 
The Disasters Emergency Committee. is operating as the main focus for donations to various charities in the U.K. - for full detail please visit this web site.

Donations to the Pakistan Floods Appeal 2010 are needed urgently as the scale of the disaster continues to grow and affect vast numbers of people, particularly children and babies. The risk of disease increases hourly. 

The UN has warned that supplies are urgently needed to support the survivors and to try and prevent disease which, it says, could double the death toll.

You can also donate to all the individual organisations via their websites.

16 August 2010

The appeal for assistance for the 20 million people in Pakistan affected by the country’s worst floods in living memory has inspired widespread generosity, with examples of individual and corporate giving pouring in from across the UK.

The average gift is a generous £60, with the majority of funds coming from individual donors.

The England Cricket Team seized the opportunity of their second test match against Pakistan at Edgbaston on 6-8 August to harness crowd support, raising over £4,000 from collections during the event.

As the extent of the disaster mounts, corporations, too, are digging deep. Marks and Spencer, for example, have donated £25,000. Vodafone Foundation have given £74,000 and Unilever over £164,000 of donations in kind. Gifts of over £10,000 each have also come in from SPAR and Cotteswold Dairy amongst many others.

18th August 2010

In the UK DEC, the Disasters Emergency Committee has already raised  £19 Million. 

The UN has launched an appeal for $459m (£290m) to help victims of Pakistan's flood disaster, which has affected at least 20 million people.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said the money would be for immediate relief over the next three months.

The disaster was "one of the most challenging that any country has faced in recent years", he said in New York.

So far, about 1,600 people have been killed by the monsoon floods.

Mr. Holmes said that unless the provision of aid such as food and clean water to millions of displaced people was rapidly increased, many more lives would be at risk.

Up to 3.5 million children are at high risk from deadly water-borne diseases in Pakistan following the country's floods, a UN spokesman has said.

In southern Pakistan, floods continue to cause havoc with water surging from the province of Sindh to neighbouring Balochistan.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who visited Pakistan, said the floods were the worst disaster he had seen.

However, the UN has so far only raised a fraction of the aid it has asked for.

"Up to 3.5 million children are at high risk of deadly water-borne diseases, such as watery diarrhoea and dysentery," Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

"What concerns us the most is water and health. Clean water is essential to prevent deadly water-borne diseases. Water during the flood has been contaminated badly," he added.

The World Health Organization was also preparing to assist tens of thousands of people in case of cholera, although the government has not notified the UN of any confirmed cases, he added.

He estimated the number at risk from such diseases was six million.

In southern Pakistan, angry flood survivors blocked a main road in Sindh province to protest against the slow delivery of aid and demanded more action from the authorities.

One of the protesters, Mohammad Laiq, said the government had to do more to help people.

"There seems to be no government here since the floods. We lost our children, our livestock, we could hardly save ourselves - though we have come here but we are getting nothing.

"Where is the government? What do we do? Where do we go? We have to tell the government and it is the responsibility of the government to do whatever is possible," he said.

Saleem Bokhari, whose village in the Layyah District of Punjab is under water, told the BBC that the situation was worsening moment by moment.

"Due to standing water there is a rapid production of mosquitoes, abdominal disease, fever, malaria and skin diseases," he said.

"Government officials and volunteers are only reaching the cities. Villages or remote areas are helpless."

Sindh Irrigation Minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo said water levels were still rising and now entering the Shikarpur district.

"The next five days are crucial," he said.

In eastern Balochistan, at least one district centre and three major towns have been inundated following a government decision to divert the thrust of the flood in the Indus river away from Jacobabad, a major town in the north-west of Sindh province, and the nearby Pakistan Air Force base.

Donations can be made to the Pakistan Floods Appeal here

Disasters Emergency Committee
http://www.dec.org.uk/

The Disasters Emergency Committee - www.dec.org.uk - is an umbrella group of UK aid organisations - including Action Aid, British Red Cross and Oxfam - working to provide clean water, food and shelter to hundreds of thousands of victims of the floods.

To call from the UK, dial 0870 60 60 900. 
The Disasters Emergency Committee. is operating as the main focus for donations to various charities in the U.K. - for full detail please visit this web site.

The UN has warned that supplies are urgently needed to support the survivors and to try and prevent disease which, it says, could double the death toll.

You can also donate to all the individual organisations via their websites.

Further Information may be obtained from these web sites

BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) News
http://news.bbc.co.uk

Foreign and Commonwealth office
http://www.fco.gov.uk

International Committee of the Red Cross
http://www.icrc.org/home.nsf/home/webfamilylinks

United Nations