"We have got rough estimates from our medical teams that at least 120,000 people have caught various diseases," Ali Nawaz Mallah, provincial additional relief commissioner told AFP.

Thousands of people are suffering from skin diseases, diarrhoea, gastroenteritis and other ailments hastened by the floods, Mallah said.

The current spate of monsoon rains has washed away more than 400 villages and claimed 167 lives.

In Badin, the worst-hit district, 300,000 people have been left homeless and are living in camps after the worst monsoons in Sindh for a decade began on July 4.

They resulted in devastating flooding across a region more than 1,000 square kilometers (400 square miles) in size.

Officials have put the number of people affected either by isolation, homelessness or disease at around one million.

The Sindh government has set up 78 medical camps and 42 mobile dispensaries, barely sufficient to treat such large numbers, he said.

"We are well short of adequate resources and medicines but gradually getting assistance from local and international welfare organisations," Mallah said.

Apart from infectious diseases, 127 cases of snake-bites have been reported to the authorities.

World Food Programme in Pakistan has pledged to distribute relief goods worth 200,000 dollars among flood victims.

WFP's country director, German Valdivia, is scheduled to reach Karachi on Monday where he is to meet senior provincial officials to formally announce the relief package, Aslam Khan, WFP head in Sindh told AFP.

"These relief goods will include 400 tons of wheat flour and 100 tons of ghee (cooking fat or oil) that will be distributed among 40,000 victims of the floods," Khan said.

Meanwhile, a foreign ministry spokesman in Islamabad announced that Japan has provided 260,000 dollars to support Pakistan's relief efforts in Sindh and southwest Balutchistan provinces.

TERRA.WIRE