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WHO believes earthquake disaster worse than December's tsunami
Leading international agencies believe the devastation caused by the earthquake that struck Pakistan last Saturday is still being underestimated.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the calamity was bigger in scale than the tsunami that struck East Asia last year and the long-term problems created as a consequence will prove more difficult to deal with.
"The number made homeless, the destruction of roads and infrastructure and the terrain over which the catastrophe has struck make this a bigger disaster than the tsunami," Hussain A Gezairy, WHO's regional director, told journalists on Thursday at the emergency health centre set up at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).
The earthquake has destroyed more than 80 percent of structures and buildings in parts of northern Pakistan. Many cities and villages in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the most affected areas, have been wiped out. More than four million people are affected, of whom one million are in acute need of help. More than 2 million people need to be re-housed, relief agencies say.
Gezairy said that as no roads were destroyed by the tsunami, destruction took place mainly within a few hundred metres along coastlines and it was far easier to assess the damage and plan relief.
"The fact only helicopters can reach so many mountain areas and that the affected areas are so remote, makes it extremely difficult to even gauge the full-scale of the damage and determine what needs to be done first," Gezairy explained.
According to the WHO, the number of health workers needed to be doubled or even tripled in some places. "There is a particularly urgent need for general practitioners with experience in emergencies and basic surgical skills. Paramedics, primary health care specialists and public health specialists, including epidemiologists, are also desperately needed," WHO said in a statement on Wednesday.
Although US $10 billion had been mobilised by the UN and world community, the WHO regional chief expressed concern that the amounts raised for tsunami victims "would not come in". Gezairy, however, stressed efforts were being made to promote more concern across the world and generate more funds.
Working with the Pakistan ministry of health in the largest operation ever launched in the country, the WHO has put hundreds of experts in the field.
The teams are set to work on building early-warning systems for disease surveillance and epidemic control. For this purpose, acting on WHO advice, the Pakistan military has already set up vaccination centres for relief workers along the roads to affected areas.
The poor sanitation conditions, hundreds of dead bodies still lying unburied and severe shortages of clean drinking water have made dangers presented by disease among the top concerns of relief agencies.
The WHO has already stated the situation seemed most alarming in major centres of destruction, particularly Muzaffarabad, Bagh and Balakot. The WHO is planning to deploy hundreds more medical staff in all affected areas to work alongside Pakistani medical teams.
"The number made homeless, the destruction of roads and infrastructure and the terrain over which the catastrophe has struck make this a bigger disaster than the tsunami," Hussain A Gezairy, WHO's regional director, told journalists on Thursday at the emergency health centre set up at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).
The earthquake has destroyed more than 80 percent of structures and buildings in parts of northern Pakistan. Many cities and villages in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the most affected areas, have been wiped out. More than four million people are affected, of whom one million are in acute need of help. More than 2 million people need to be re-housed, relief agencies say.
Gezairy said that as no roads were destroyed by the tsunami, destruction took place mainly within a few hundred metres along coastlines and it was far easier to assess the damage and plan relief.
"The fact only helicopters can reach so many mountain areas and that the affected areas are so remote, makes it extremely difficult to even gauge the full-scale of the damage and determine what needs to be done first," Gezairy explained.
According to the WHO, the number of health workers needed to be doubled or even tripled in some places. "There is a particularly urgent need for general practitioners with experience in emergencies and basic surgical skills. Paramedics, primary health care specialists and public health specialists, including epidemiologists, are also desperately needed," WHO said in a statement on Wednesday.
Although US $10 billion had been mobilised by the UN and world community, the WHO regional chief expressed concern that the amounts raised for tsunami victims "would not come in". Gezairy, however, stressed efforts were being made to promote more concern across the world and generate more funds.
Working with the Pakistan ministry of health in the largest operation ever launched in the country, the WHO has put hundreds of experts in the field.
The teams are set to work on building early-warning systems for disease surveillance and epidemic control. For this purpose, acting on WHO advice, the Pakistan military has already set up vaccination centres for relief workers along the roads to affected areas.
The poor sanitation conditions, hundreds of dead bodies still lying unburied and severe shortages of clean drinking water have made dangers presented by disease among the top concerns of relief agencies.
The WHO has already stated the situation seemed most alarming in major centres of destruction, particularly Muzaffarabad, Bagh and Balakot. The WHO is planning to deploy hundreds more medical staff in all affected areas to work alongside Pakistani medical teams.
For more information:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/I...
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In the hills above Pakistan's most famous tourist attraction, earthquake survivors have become so desperate for shelter that they are sleeping in hollowed-out bales of hay.
Their homes have been destroyed and no tents have arrived from the government. At night it is bitterly cold here in the mountains. So the villagers have made their own makeshift tents out of hay, forging a crude frame with bits of plank scavenged from the ruins of their homes, and piling bales on top. But it does not keep the rain out.
These are the people the relief effort is turning to now, after the search for survivors in the rubble was called off yesterday. The United Nations says there are more than a million people left left homeless by Saturday's terrible earthquake.
They line the Karakoram Highway, Pakistan's biggest tourist attraction, 500 miles of road that passes through some of the most spectacular mountain scenery on earth on its way to the Chinese border in the far north.
Now the stench of death hangs over the highway, the smell of bodies the survivors have not been able to dig out of the ruins slowly decomposing. And all day long it is thronged with people who have come down from the mountain villages to find aid. When one of the relief trucks passes by, they mob it, the children running blindly across the oncoming traffic so you have to slam on the brakes and swerve.
The towns along the southern stretch of the highway are damaged. But to see the worst of it you have to venture off the highway into the hills where the tourists never go and which for most people form a distant scenic backdrop to the journey to higher peaks further north.
Up here, there are scenes like something from the Second World War. Entire villages have been reduced to great piles of masonry and mud bricks, wooden rafters jutting out at crazy angles. The streets are gone; the only way in is to clamber over the ruins, over a toppled mud wall that quivers dangerously.
And beyond are the villagers, sleeping under pathetic makeshift tents, or in the open. Village after village, thousands of them, exposed to the elements in mountains where the temperature will drop drastically in two weeks, and it will begin to snow in six.
The death toll here was relatively low, because most of the villagers are farmers, and they were already at work in the fields when the earthquake struck. But, for these survivors, life has become unbearably hard.
"We wish we had died in the quake," says Mohammed Zubair, standing on the ruins of his house in Battamori. "It would have been better than to see the bodies of our relatives, to see our homes destroyed."
"Yes, it would have been better," agrees Mohammed Idris, a visitor from the next village. "We cannot sleep at night. We hear our children crying, and we can do nothing for them."
Read More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article319703.ece