Angelina Jolie Visits Flood-Hit Pakistan

American actress Angelina Jolie (in black) listens through a translator to women in Pakistan's Dadu district after they were displaced by historic flooding that has deluged Pakistan since mid-June.

Jolie is a special UN envoy for refugees. She was previously in Pakistan as a special UN envoy after a deadly 2005 earthquake and after flooding in 2010.

Jolie wears a face mask as she speaks with a mother living in a makeshift shelter in the southern Dadu district.

The International Rescue Comittee (IRC) said in a statement before the actress's September 20 visit that Jolie would be there "to witness and gain understanding of the situation, and to hear from people affected directly about their needs, and about steps to prevent such suffering in the future."

A boy wades through floodwaters in the Jaffarabad district in central Pakistan on September 19.

The 2022 monsoon season has dumped more than three times the average rainfall on Pakistan, leading to vast swaths of the country being submerged. 
 

Internally displaced people gather to receive food handouts near a camp in flood-hit Sindh Province on September 19.

More than 1,500 people have been killed as a result of the floods, including a growing number from disease.

People on makeshift rafts are pulled across floodwaters in the Jaffarabad district on September 18. 

The World Health Organization says a surge in sickness as a result of the flooding has the potential to become a "second disaster."

 

Internally displaced people at a camp in Sindh Province on September 19. 

More than 300 people have died from disease since July 1 and more than 2.7 million have been treated for water-borne illnesses at makeshift and mobile hospitals, according to Reuters. 

A family who fled to higher ground is photographed in a temporary shelter in the Jaffarabad district on September 19. 

The massive scale of the flooding is compounding the growing medical crisis as many hospitals remain submerged and unusable. Much of the country's food-growing farmland is also underwater. 

A crowd of men affected by the floods await handouts organized by an Islamist political party in the southern city of Larkana. 

Pakistani officials say it will take at least two months for the floodwaters to fully recede.