More than half of the flood victims in Pakistan’s worst-hit Sindh province have returned to their homes over the past three weeks as the waters gradually receded, officials have said.
The announcement came as Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif visited the district of Jaccobabad in Sindh.
He is travelling from there to the town of Sohbatput in another flood-stricken province, Baluchistan, his office said.
Floodwaters are gradually receding in both provinces and elsewhere in Pakistan, after they were engulfed in mid-June in unprecedented monsoon rains and floods that have killed 1,719 people in the impoverished South Asian country.
At one point in August, more than half a million people were living in tents across Pakistan.
The disaster management agency in Sindh said currently a little over 200,000 people are living in relief camps in the province, where the floods have affected 12 million people and killed 780.
The Indus River, which caused much of the devastations in Sindh, is now at normal levels, though authorities say it will take another two months to completely drain the water.
Waterborne diseases and skin infections are spreading in Sindh, where doctors have treated 30,000 people over the past 24 hours, the provincial health department said.
Nationwide, the floods have affected 33 million people, damaged over two million homes, washed away thousands of miles of roads and destroyed 435 bridges.
The overall fatalities have included 641 children and 345 women.
Several economists and government officials have said the cost of the disaster may reach 32 billion dollars (£28 billion).
The United Nations humanitarian agency said over the weekend that seven million women and children and women require immediate access to food and that around 5.5 million people have no access to safe drinking water.
Around 8.2 million people in flood-affected areas needed urgent health services, the OCHA added.
In early October, the UN raised its call for 160 million dollars (£143 million) to 816 million dollars (£729 million) to help with the crisis.
For his part, Mr Sharif has repeatedly asked developed countries — nations that experts say have impacted climate change the most — to scale up aid to his impoverished Islamic nation, where authorities say flood survivors will face a harsh winter this December.
