Lahore:
Perched on the roof of his neighbor, Ghulam Bano looks at the remains of his house, overwhelmed in flood waters from troubles and foulbooks that have swallowed up a large part of Punjab.
Bano moved to the city of Shahdara last year, on the outskirts of Lahore, to avoid the pollution of suffocation of the Smog of the second city of Pakistan, only for its new start to be overturned by unleashed floods.
“My husband had started to cough blood and his condition did not make worse when the smog struck,” Bano told AFP, walking in the muddy streets.
Pakistan is regularly ranked among the most polluted countries in the world, with the most polluted megaphable between November and February.
“I thought the smog was quite bad-I never thought it could be worse with the floods,” she said.
Its impoverished district is home to thousands of low houses together in narrow streets.
The ravasy river overflowing nearby has flooded many of them, forcing dozens of families to take refuge in a primary school on higher grounds, where doctors dealt with people for skin infections related to floods.
Stronger rains are planned during the weekend, including warnings of an increase in urban floods in Lahore, which borders India.
With her husband in the bed of tuberculosis, aggravated by implacable smog, Bano has become the only supplier of a household who has trouble breathing, surviving and undergoing floods.
“I ate today after two days. There is no water clean to drink. I left my daughter at a parent and I stayed hoping that the water would go away,” she said.
The landslides and the floods triggered by heavier monsoon rains than usual have killed more than 800 people on a national scale since June of this year.
