TOKYO -- At least 11 million Pakistanis, 5% of the country's population, are facing severe food shortages due to heavy rains and subsequent flooding that started in June, and the number of people going without sufficient sustenance is likely to expand, Rathi PalaKrishnan, deputy director of the World Food Program in Pakistan, told Nikkei Asia.
In an online interview on Friday, the U.N. food agency official said 59 districts in the South Asian nation had been declared calamity-hit, and "in those 59 districts, 11 million people are severely food insecure. [But now] the number of calamity-hit districts has gone up from 59 to 81. So for sure the 11 million has increased."
