I saw an absurd item on the news the other evening. Well, it would have been absurd if it wasn’t so sad. Apparently, Pakistan is not receiving anywhere near the amount of aid it desperately needs following the recent floods that wiped out thousands of villages and left more than two million homeless.

In a country prone to seasonal flooding, these are the worst floods in 80 years, reportedly affecting around 20 million people including 6 million children. Yet people are generally being slow to give – the international aid is failing to flow.

The report went on to say that analysts believe people are not giving readily because the floods have not caught the public imagination as did the 2005 South East Asian Boxing Day tsunami and more recently the Haitian earthquake in January 2010.

That is a very sad indictment on our society!

Are we now having flavour-of-the-month catastrophes? Or designer disasters?

Human suffering is human suffering whether caused by forces of nature or from man’s own making. Surely the type of natural disaster is irrelevant – people still desperately need help to survive.

After the Haitian earthquake, which affected 1.5 million people, $920 million of aid funding was donated in the first 10 days – $702 (NZ) for each affected person.

But in the first 10 days after the recent Pakistan floods only $91 million had been donated, just $4.50 per affected person.

Another theory put forward is that because Pakistan is considered to be an alleged hotbed for terrorism the West is slower to come to its aid.

Are we really so politically brainwashed?

Yet another theory is that people have been asked to donate to so many disasters around the world of late, that in these times of economic recession perhaps we are just unable to spare much more for yet another appeal.

Or, with the constant media bombardment on our televisions screens, are we sadly becoming inured to the onslaught of suffering we see around the globe.

Whatever the reasons, these people in Pakistan still urgently need help as they face the worst monsoon flooding in almost a century. And now there is the threat of a cholera epidemic and other water-borne diseases.

After personally visiting the flooded Pakistan provinces – an area the size of our South Island – UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has urged the world to “speed up” aid for this “heartwrenching” disaster.

Surely the world should not need urging, no matter where or what the disaster.

– Fran Pardon