AROUND four million children in Pakistan still live near potentially life-threatening floodwaters, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

It is now more than four months sincew monsoon rains washed away their homes and villages.

The children face skyrocketing rates of acute respiratory infections, made worse by the presence of contaminated and stagnant pools of water, Unicef said on Sunday evening.

Meanwhile, the number of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition in flood-affected regions nearly doubled in the period from July to December in comparison with the same six months of the year before, the UN agency warned.

About 1.5 million children are still in need of lifesaving nutrition interventions, it added.

Unicef representative in Pakistan Abdullah Fadil said: “Children living in Pakistan’s flood-affected areas have been pushed to the brink.

“The rains may have ended, but the crisis for children has not. Severe acute malnutrition, respiratory and water-borne diseases coupled with the cold are putting millions of young lives at risk.”

Last year’s summer floods in Pakistan claimed 1,700 lives and “left a territory the size of Switzerland under water,” bringing “apocalyptic” conditions to 33 million people, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif wrote in last Friday’s Guardian.

More than two million homes, 8,700 miles of roads and 23,000 schools and clinics were destroyed, he added.

In the southern region of Jacobabad, many families have little more than cloth to protect their makeshift home from the floodwaters, Unicef reported.

Snowfall and freezing temperatures in the mountainous and high-altitude areas, which were also affected by the devastating summer floods, are now adding to the difficulties, the agency said.

Unicef, which works in some of the world’s toughest places to reach some of the most disadvantaged children, said that it had been providing warm clothing and blankets to about 200,000 children, women and men.

It found around 60,000 of the children in the flood-hit areas are now suffering from acute malnutrition.

Humanitarian teams have brought safe drinking water to more than a million people and hygiene kits to another million.

Mr Fadi said: “We know the climate crisis played a central role in supercharging the cascading calamities evident in Pakistan.

“We must do everything within our power to ensure girls and boys in Pakistan are able to fully recover from the current disaster and to protect and safeguard them from the next one.”