Flooding in Pakistan. Pregnant women waiting for medical help in shelters

Sitting next to her four-year-old daughter, Fahmida Bibi, who has reached the late stages of pregnancy, is eagerly awaiting the arrival of a doctor who is rumored to visit her camp where flood victims live in Pakistan. The camp was set up on land belonging to a small railway station in the Fazilpur district of the Punjab. The camp, which houses about 500 people, is the only place that has not yet flooded. Fahmida, 40, arrived at the camp over a week ago with her five children and her husband’s in-laws. “I need a doctor or a midwife,” says a nine-month-old pregnant woman suffering from leg pain. “What will I do if something bad happens to my child?” she adds anxiously. Record monsoon rains have triggered devastating floods in Pakistan that have killed at least 1,300 people and affected more than 33 million. And the United Nations Population Fund announced on Saturday that at least 128,000 pregnant women in flooded areas are in dire need of assistance, with 42,000 women due to give birth within the next three months. Fahmeda hasn’t seen a doctor in a month. A medical report, carefully kept by a pregnant woman, along with a prescription for expensive medicine, indicates that her child is in her womb in a breech presentation. Fahmida sleeps outside on a traditional rope bed that she shares with her five children, ages 4 to 12. The modest camp includes at least five other pregnant women, all of whom complain that there are no female doctors or midwives to help them. Most of these women refused to accept male volunteer doctors who arrived at the camp as part of the rescue teams. In conservative rural areas of Pakistan, it is not customary for women to go to male doctors, especially when it comes to gynecological examinations.