Villagers collect rocks and boulders to be used for a walking path in a flood-affected village in Madyan, Swat Valley. Extreme poverty, poor diet and health, exposure to disease, and inadequate sanitation and hygiene annually produce alarming levels of malnutrition amongst children, but the floods of 2010 and 2011 have increasingly endangered an already vulnerable population. Child malnutrition has breached emergency levels in Pakistan - particularly Sindh province - after monsoon floods devastated the country's poorest region for a second year. Malnourishment It is the single biggest contributor to under-five mortality, increasing the risk of infections and slowing recovery from illness. It stuns both mental and physical growth and their future capacity, sapping the next generation's ability to meet the demands of a country already facing an unstable future. According to UN reports, hundreds of thousands of children in Pakistan suffer from severe-acute-malnutrition, with 15.1% of children experiencing acute malnourishment. The Economist recently reported that 44% of children in Pakistan suffer from varying degrees of malnutrition.