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Water scheme
This region has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. On most measures of development, Thar is at the bottom of Pakistan's 120 districts.
Doctors and nurses are hard to find. Qualified medical staff from the region often leave to earn much more money in big cities like Karachi.
In Thar, there are many villages without schools and many schools without teachers.
The new water system promises much, but supplies remain sporadic
Sindh government defends its performance by pointing to its massive investment in a new scheme to bring clean drinking water to the region.
The $33m project involves installing 750 water purification projects in villages across the desert region. Of these, as of this month, about 280 have already been installed, says PakOasis, the company running the project.
The scheme is being billed as a ray of hope for Thar. It uses imported Danish technology to pump underground water. Impurities from the water are then removed using American membrane technology. The filtration process is called Reverse Osmosis (RO).
Each RO plant runs on zero-electricity cost. It is powered by solar panels imported from China.
The biggest of these water plants stands on a hill near Mithi. It has the capacity of purifying 2 million gallons of water daily. At its full capacity, it is expected to benefit 300,000 people.
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