Collected photo

CHUNG, Pakistan, Aug 31, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - 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.

"I used to eat as I please, sleep as I please, walk as I please -- that is 
all gone now. I can't do that here," added Fatima, who asked AFP not to use 
her real name.

Monsoon rains over the past week swelled three major rivers that cut through 
Punjab province, Pakistan's agricultural heartland and home to nearly half of 
its 255 million people.

The number of affected people rose on Sunday to more than two million, 
according to provincial senior minister Marriyum Aurangzeb.

Around 750,000 people have been evacuated, of whom 115,000 were rescued by 
boat -- making it the largest rescue operation in Punjab's history, according 
to the provincial government.

The flooded rivers have affected mostly rural areas near their banks but 
heavy rain also flooded urban areas, including several parts of Lahore -- the 
country's second-largest city.

While South Asia's seasonal monsoon brings rainfall that farmers depend on, 
climate change is making the phenomenon more erratic, and deadly, across the 
region.

Landslides and floods triggered by heavier-than-usual monsoon rains have 
killed more than 850 people nationwide since June.

The latest downpour has killed at least 32 people, the provincial minister 
said on Sunday.

- Infections and trauma -

Sleeping in tents held together with thin wooden sticks, women displaced by 
the floods struggle to get sanitary pads and clean clothes when theirs are 
stained by blood from their periods.

Menstruation remains a taboo topic in Pakistan, with many women discouraged 
from speaking about it.

"We are struggling to get pads for when we get our period. And even if we do, 
there are no proper bathrooms to use," said Aleema Bibi, 35, as her baby 
slept on a sheet soiled with mud.

"We go to the homes nearby to use the bathroom," she added.

Jameela, who uses only one name, said she seeks privacy in a makeshift 
bathroom next to a cowshed.

"We wait for men in these homes to leave, so that we can go use the bathrooms 
and change our pads," she said.

Outside the medical truck beside the relief camp, a concerned woman asked 
where to take her eight-month-pregnant daughter-in-law who had gone into 
labour, AFP journalists saw.

The pregnant women are also vulnerable to infectious diseases, according to 
doctors in the medical camp set up by a local NGO.

"I receive around 200 to 300 patients every day with different infections and 
water-borne diseases," said Fahad Abbas, 27, a doctor at the medical camp.

"There are a lot of patients here who are going through psychological trauma, 
especially women and children, after losing their homes."

Even without the crisis of a flood, 675 babies under one month old die every 
day in Pakistan, along with 27 women in perinatal stages from preventable 
complications, according to the World Health Organization.

Another woman, who wanted to stay anonymous, said the medicine she once used 
to manage her period cramps was now too difficult to buy.

"We escaped death, but this misery is no less than death either," Jameela 
said.