"The floods came, and then the sickness.

Muhammad Yaqoob stood on his concrete porch and watched the black, angry water swirl around the acacia trees and rush toward his village last September, the deluge making a sound that was like nothing he had ever heard. “It was like thousands of snakes sighing all at once,” he recalled.

At first, he thought villagers’ impromptu sandbags, made from rice and fertilizer sacks, had helped save their homes and escape Pakistan’s worst floods on record. But Yaqoob — whom villagers call a wadero, or chief — soon realized it was just the beginning of a health disaster. The temperatures rose to triple digits, as the water that would not recede festered in the sun."

Annie Gowen and Saiyna Bashir report for the Washington Post with modelling by Niko Kommenda  September 5, 2023. [2]