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ISLAMABAD: The chief minister of Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province this week announced her government would provide Rs100 billion [$352 million] in financial assistance for victims of this year’s monsoon floods, vowing to ensure transparency and merit in its distribution. 

Unusually heavy rains exacerbated by climate change and excess floodwaters released by dams in India caused cataclysmic floods in Punjab in late August. The deluges killed over 130 people and affected over 4.5 million others, forcing the provincial government to evacuate more than 2.6 million people from high-risk areas. 

Nationwide, deadly monsoon rains and floods killed over 1,000 people and 22,000 livestock since late June and washed away over 2.2 million acres of crops, as per data from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). Pakistan’s government has said it is estimating economic damages inflicted by the deadly rains and floods via surveys to mitigate losses.

“And now that billions of rupees, around Rs100 billion [$352 million] that we are about to give for your rehabilitation, for the construction of your houses, for the losses of your crops, for the losses of your animals, this is also being done through Punjab’s own resources,” Nawaz told people gathered at a camp in the eastern city of Okara set up for flood victims. 

The chief minister kicked off the provincial government’s Flood Rehabilitation Program by distributing cheques and ATM cards among floods victims in the city on Monday. 

Nawaz’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, which is in power in Punjab, said around Rs96 million [$335,600] were disbursed to 500 flood victims in Depalpur tehsil on Monday. 

The party said 73 percent of the flood damages survey has been completed across Punjab, adding that it was expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

The PML-N said a total of 446,697 survey entries have been completed across Punjab, revealing that over 1.2million acres of land and 131,309 houses had been affected by the floods.

It said 5,805 “large” animals and 2,097 sheep and goats perished due to the deluges.

KARACHI: Pakistan has confirmed a new poliovirus case from the country’s northwestern Torghar district, the National Health Institute (NIH) confirmed on Tuesday, raising the total tally of cases this year to 30. 

The latest polio infection was detected in a 12-month-old boy from Union Council Ghari in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province’s Torghar district, the NIH said. The makes it the 19th polio case from KP this year while nine infections have been reported from Sindh and one each from the eastern Punjab and northern Gilgit-Baltistan territories.

“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, has confirmed a new case of wild poliovirus (WPV1) in District Torghar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” the statement said. 

“This is the second case from District Torghar this year.”

The development takes place a day after Pakistan launched the second phase of a nationwide polio immunization campaign until Oct. 23, aiming to vaccinate more than a million children in KP, where the highest number of cases have been reported this year. 

Polio is a highly infectious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis. The only effective protection is through repeated doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine for every child under five during each campaign, alongside timely completion of all routine immunizations.

Pakistan is among the last two nations in the world, along with Afghanistan, where the disease remains endemic. The South Asian country has made remarkable progress since the 1990s, when annual polio cases exceeded 20,000, bringing them down to just eight by 2018. However, Pakistan recorded 74 cases in 2024, a sharp increase from six in 2023 and only one in 2021.

Pakistan’s efforts to eliminate poliovirus have been hampered by parental refusals, widespread misinformation and repeated attacks on anti-polio workers by militant groups. In remote and volatile areas, vaccination teams often operate under police protection, though security personnel themselves have also been targeted and killed in attacks.