Pakistan, Aug. 15 -- Gilgit-Baltistan today faces a water crisis that lays bare the state's negligence more starkly than any speech or statistic ever could. In August alone, official records confirm over 3,300 cases of acute diarrhoea and more than 500 cases of pneumonia, alongside outbreaks of typhoid and suspected cholera, all stemming from the collapse of clean drinking water supplies after last month's floods.

Hospitals have been pushed beyond their limits, with private clinics staying open until the early hours because government facilities have neither the medicines nor the staff to cope.

Families are forced to pay extortionate rates for tanker deliveries, and those who cannot are reduced to drinking from contaminated streams, kno...