A PAKISTANI community leader from East Lancashire has flown out to the crisis-hit country to join the aid effort.

More than £20,000 has been raised locally and fundraiser Hussain Akhtar has been seeing how the cash is being spent.

He also took supplies and cash with him to camps near Peshawar in the north of the country.

Mr Akhtar, who served as a councillor for Shear Brow in Blackburn for 11 years, said he had been shocked at the levels of sickness and hunger as a result of the catastrophic floods.

He said: “Everybody has been working hard in Blackburn to raise money and I wanted to make sure the money made it to the right hands.

“There are so many problems, roads have been blocked by the police so that has further blocked supplies and medicines.

“So far I have been able to pass on bags of supplies and water and we have been transporting as much food as we can buy.

“I have also been shocked by the levels of damage to buildings and I am worried about what happens next.

"Even when the immediate disaster passes there will still be a huge problem of rebuilding the country.”

The United Nations has warned that up to 3.5 million children could be in danger of contracting deadly diseases carried through contaminated water and insects.

Pakistan's worst floods in decades have killed up to 1,600 people and made two million homeless.

The United Nations said that so far only a small fraction of the funds needed for initial relief has arrived.