Four more people including three children have died due to an unabated drought and lack of health care facilities in a remote Sindh province district, home to thousands of minority Hindus in Pakistan, raising the toll to 301.
The Tharparkar district, close to Indo-Pak border, is mostly a desert area, inhabited by mostly Hindu subsistence farmers, who are now standing at the brink of famine due to poor rainfall for five successive years.
An eight-day old Kausar in Diplo, nine-month old Perkaash in Civil Hospital Mithi, and a six-month-old child at district hospital Chachro were among the four dead, while 25 children were being treated at the hospital, local media reported.
The latest deaths had raised the toll to 301, with 44 deaths reported only in the month of January 2015.
Although the deaths are officially recognised as drought- related, the medical causes of infant mortality have mostly been cited as malnutrition, pneumonia, blood infection, diarrhoea, birth asphyxia and haemorrhagic fever.
Tharparker has a large Hindu community, who form 35 per cent of its population according to 1998 census.
