PAKISTAN: Islamabad's children's hospital is overwhelmed by quake victims. In Muzzafarabad, children begin to come to terms with the trauma

Record ID: 174160

  • Title: PAKISTAN: Islamabad's children's hospital is overwhelmed by quake victims. In Muzzafarabad, children begin to come to terms with the trauma
  • Date: 16th October 2005
  • Summary: MORE OF CHILDREN SINGING ACTION SONG
  • Embargoed: 31st October 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Pakistan
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVA9MUPTBT1D77VD0D6JCQW34AQL
  • Story Text: "Where is my mother?" cries a little girl as she is wheeled into an overworked operating theatre in northern Pakistan's main children's hospital.
    South Asia's worst earthquake in 100 years injured more than 62,000 people, many of them children, and a week later Islamabad's Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) is overwhelmed.
    Surgeons and doctors are exhausted after working around the clock and a children's department that has just 220 regular beds is now treating more than 700, many with serious head, back and abdominal injuries.
    Regular wards have overflowed and heavily bandaged, scarred and bruised boys and girls of all ages are lying on makeshift beds in lobbies, corridors, hallways and verandas.
    Hundreds more children are being treated at smaller but similarly crowded facilities and temporary hospitals in Islamabad and at the military hospital in the adjoining town of Rawalpindi.
    Many are survivors of schools that collapsed in the worst hit North West Frontier Province and Pakistani Kashmir when the quake struck during morning lessons.
    An estimated 38,000 people died in the disaster.
    Professor Zaheer Abbassi, head of paediatric surgery at PIMS, said there was an urgent need for more doctors and surgeons and appealed for foreign volunteers.
    "We do not have enough number of staff with us. The surgeons are in limited number. The nursing and paramedical staff are in limited number. And the bed capacity is obviously limited. The operating theatres were not obioursly geared for treating hundreds of children in a short span of time," Abbassi told Reuters on Saturday (October 15).
    Abbassi said his doctors were sometimes doing 24-hour shifts and then just getting a few hours sleep before they are up again for another 24 hours.
    A specialist Russian surgical team with vast experience treating injuries from earthquakes and other disasters has been carrying out 40 or more complex operations a day.
    Abbassi appealed for more volunteers, especially surgeons.
    The head of the Russian team, Professor Leonid Roshal, said the disaster was one of the worst he had known despite working with victims of most major earthquakes in the past 15 years.
    "Many countries, many countries prepare for disaster (s) , but nobody ready -- this is really (real)," he said. "I don't know one country -- the United States, England -- I don't know."
    He said he hoped the peak of emergency cases was approaching, after hundreds of children were brought in the past two days.
    But with so many injured and a majority of them children and only serious cases with good survival chances making it to PIMS, Abbassi said he feared not.
    He said the numbers they had seemed "to be only the tip of the iceberg" and they were expecting more children over the next one or two weeks.
    However, there was one silver lining to the grim situation.
    Abbassi said for some strange reason the children were coping with the situation better that adults.
    "The children, to my amazement, are very brave," he said.
    "Many of them are actually settling quite nicely. Although they are perhaps not fully with it (yet)," he added.
    Meanwhile at a muddy university ground in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan Kashmir, dozens of children on Sunday (October 16) armed with coloured pencils and papers, began the long and painful process of understanding what had happened to their city and to their loved ones.
    Like thousands of children in Pakistan Kashmir, severely hit by the quake, eleven-year-old Misba Kiran has lost classmates and relatives.
    And based on the images that she has drawn, she misses her home which was flattened and reduced to rubble.
    Home is now a muddy tent which offers little comfort to the searing heat during the day and the bitter cold at night.
    "Our house was like that (referring to the drawing), the school was like that, the table was like that, that's why I have made this drawing. I miss my house," she said.
    International children's organisations have begun arriving in the area to help thousands of children cope with the trauma of last week's quake. They draw, sing songs and talk - listening to what each child is saying.
    "What we are trying (to do) is help children have normal opportunities again, trying to build normality back into their system, children are very resilient and they have the opportunity as you can see from their pictures today to be able to share exactly how they feel. They have a great hope for the future of Pakistan," said Deborah Barry of Save the Children.
    Many of the estimated 38,000 who died in the October 8 quake were women and children. Children who were then just starting a day in school were crushed or trapped by the rubble of their school building. The lucky ones who have survived are now coping not just with the trauma of the disaster, but are also having to be prepared for the coming of Kashmir's bitter winter.
    "Right now it is shelter, really the shelter. The weather has changed we are going into winter and it is really a big problem. So shelter and sanitation are the big problems right now that we are seeing right here," said Barry.
    Tens of thousands are living in tent cities that have sprung up all over Pakistan Kashmir.
    Although he has lost his school and home, nine-year-old Sajad Ahmad is among the few lucky ones whose family survived.
    "When the earthquake happened, I was thinking of my parents. I thought I had lost them. I thought it was the end of the world," said Sajad.
    Many believe children who survive disasters become stronger psychologically, but many fear that the cold weather will hit these same children the hardest.
    In some remote mountain villages hit by the quake, snow has already fallen, making road access virtually impossible.
    Heavy rains in recent days have hampered air relief and medical operations. And, winter in Kashmir is set to begin in coming weeks, making the need for shelter even more desperate.
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