Saeedabad: Hakim Machhi has been camped out on a river bank for three days, waiting in vain for Pakistani aid workers to pluck him to safety after stinking flood waters swallowed up his home.

About 50 families lived in the remote village of Alan Suhebjo, 30 kilometres north of Hyderabad in southern Sindh province, but their homes have disappeared under water in Pakistan's worst humanitarian disaster.

Around 10 kilometres from the nearest town of Saeedabad, the village is largely isolated from the state-sponsored and mainstream independent relief operations straining to cope with a crisis that has hit 17 million.

Resourceful

Instead, villagers fell back on their resourcefulness, decamping to a nearby embankment and collection of mud huts already abandoned by their occupants too frightened by rising waters.

Children swam through the putrid flood. Wives and daughters busied themselves with what household chores they could do. Men took it in turns to keep watch over the rising waters and trudged into Saeedabad for help.

"We're finishing our food reserves and our children are getting sick with no medical help forthcoming," said Machhi, shirtless and with his skin burnt by the sun.

"We are trying to get transport to go to a relief camp but no one's here to help us," the 35-year-old said.

Mohammad Sohrab, 50, a grey-haired peasant cradling a newborn baby in his lap, blamed the government led by President Asif Ali Zardari.

"Our rulers come here to seek votes whenever they fight elections but in this time of distress no one's here to take care of us. We're dying and the government is doing nothing to save our children," Sohrab said.

The United Nations warned that 800,000 people in desperate need of aid had been cut off by the deluge across the country and appealed for more helicopters to deliver supplies to those people reachable only by air.

Officials and relief workers acknowledge that those needing help in remote villages have not been rescued because of lack of communication and large-scale destruction.

"There could still be people in remote and isolated areas where assistance has yet to reach," said head of the relief operations in Sindh, Ghulam Ali Pasha.

"But wherever we get reports of such people we promptly rescue them and provide them with relief."

"We have ample food supplies and medicines. Our health department and district administrations are fully committed to undertaking the job."

The United Nations estimates that 4.6 million people are without shelter across Pakistan. Pasha says that of 1.6 million homeless people in Sindh, half have been taken to government buildings, schools and tents.

Tent cities

Officials are considering moving people out of government buildings into tent cities to lessen health problems caused by overcrowding.

"Thousands of people are still stranded in isolated places, cut off from communication. Some of them are known but they are surrounded by waters filled with snakes, which keep us away," said relief volunteer Aslam Khwaja.

Mohammad Qasim, from Manjhand town but now living at a camp in a local school in Hyderabad, said his three-year-old son died because he could not get proper healthcare in time.

It took the family a couple of days to find a truck to drive them to safety in Hyderabad. When they reached the camp, Qasim did not initially realise his son was so ill.

"I lost my son, so have many others because proper healthcare facilities are not available," said Qasim.

"The government makes big claims about providing us relief, but in fact we receive nothing. We're abandoned mercilessly to die," he said.