Umeed-e-Nau - Health and WASH support for drought affected people of Umerkot district, Sindh CARE International in Pakistan is urgently seeking USD $0.5 million to provide life-saving assistance to an estimated 60,000 people in need in the drought-affected communities of district Umerkot in the Sindh province for six months. The main objective of the project is to provide life-saving nutrition sensitive Health and WASH support to drought affected communities of Umerkot district. Due to below-average rainfall since 2016 resulted in no or substantially less crop production, losses of livestock, severe malnutrition and deaths of children in the 08 drought affected districts of Sindh and 14 districts of Balochistan province. The Sindh and Balochistan governments have initiated distribution of uncooked food packages and asked for greater support of the humanitarian sector to meet the remaining vast unmet need (NDMA Conference, 18 January 2019). The situation requires urgent humanitarian response to save lives of people affected by drought especially children, new born, pregnant amp lactating women, men and elderly sick people.
CIP team visited the affected areas of Umkerkot and held consultative meetings with the National and Provincial Disaster Management Authorities and other stakeholders. Based on this and the draft findings of the Natural Disasters Consortium’s Needs Assessment, CIP devised a comprehensive strategy to provide life-saving nutrition-sensitive health and WASH support to vulnerable population of District Umerkot, with a special focus on pregnant amp lactating women (PLWs) and children. The project will focus on Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) children promote improved Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) and Behavior Change initiatives in order to protect and ensure breastfeeding, as well as provision, treatment and referral of micronutrient deficiencies. Acute malnourished children and PLWs will be treated through Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) interventions.  The emergency Health component will also include contextually-appropriate Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for women, girls and adolescents to prevent maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity. Nutrition promotion, nutritional supplements / multi-vitamins, medicines and referral systems for complicated cases will provided. The WASH component of the project will reduce the impact of drought and malnutrition by addressing the underlying causes through provision of potable water, and effective hygiene and nutrition sessions..
The summary of project interventions is as below:
- Provision of primary health care (PHC) including antenatal, postnatal, and family planning information and services to 21,800 individuals including 6115 women, 5875  men, 5004 girls and 4806 boys
- Provision of clean delivery kits to 200 women
- Family planning awareness to 4,000 women and men.
- Ensuring access of 28,000 individuals  including 7854  women, 7546 men, 6426 girls and 6174 boys to appropriate WASH services that are culturally and gender appropriate, secure and user friendly.
- Nutrition sensitive hygiene sessions to 3,000 women and children.
- Water quality treatment and enhanced knowledge on water treatment to cover 3000 individuals including 842 women, 808 men, 689 girls and 661 boys.