PAKISTAN: Children in quake-ravaged Kashmir begin succumbing to winter's harsh cold temperatures

Record ID: 174204

  • Title: PAKISTAN: Children in quake-ravaged Kashmir begin succumbing to winter's harsh cold temperatures
  • Date: 3rd December 2005
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Hindko) AZMAT BIBI, QUAKE SURVIVER, SAYING: "We are living in tents. It's very cold so the children are falling sick. My child is very ill. I am very upset, extremely upset."
  • Embargoed: 18th December 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Pakistan
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA7C5505NT3FKXLZ10ETZJV9H3L
  • Story Text: The Oct. 8 earthquake killed more than 73,000 people and left up to three million homeless.
    But now, as a brutal Himalayan winter sets in, the worry is that disease could kill the cold and poorly nourished survivors.
    A huge aid effort involving Pakistani authorities, the United Nations, the Red Cross and numerous aid groups, has been trying to ensure survivors get proper shelter and adequate food to survive the winter.
    Tents have been delivered to mountain villages by helicopter, truck, on donkeys and on foot in the eight weeks since the quake struck.
    But aid officials now say most of the tents handed out to Pakistani earthquake survivors are incapable of withstanding the winter and the focus of relief efforts is now on other ways to ensure people stay warm.
    Meanwhile, children, the most vulnerable segment of the survivors, have started succumbing to the harsh conditions in the hastily-set up tent villages.
    According to doctors in Muzaffarabad's Abbas Medical Institute of Sciences, the hospital is receiving between ten to fifteen sick children from the nearby tent villages every day.
    "We are living in tents. Its very cold so the children are falling sick. My child is very ill. I am very upset, extremely upset," said Azmat Bibi trying to calm her moaning 14-month-old son suffering from severe pneumonia.
    Mercifully, snowfall has not been too heavy so far, but when it does start snowing hard keeping the survivers dry, warm, well-fed and healthy will prove to be a daunting job for all concerned.
    Even doctors are preparing for the worst.
    Dr. Tahir Aziz, a child specialist at Abbas Medical Institute told Reuters cases of pneumonia were quite common among children of poorer Kashmiri families in the winter months but this year they were expecting the numbers to be much larger than usual. "When the rains and the snow start, cases of pnuemonia will increase which will make things difficult for us," he said as he watched the childrens' ward at the hospital filling up with sick, fretful babies.
    Most survivors want to stay on their land with their animals but thousands have trekked out of the mountains to towns in the foothills where crowded, unsanitary tent camps have sprung up.
    While there have been no outbreaks of epidemics or increase in mortality among survivors since the winter began to bite a week ago, conditions for the spread of disease are ripe.
    Irum Naz, a young mother from a devastated village some 40 kms from Muzzafarabad, said she had taken great care to keep her 12-month-old daughter warm, but given the squalour in the tentage village, there was not much she could do to prevent her child from getting diarrhoea.
    "In spite of so many precautions, my child fell sick because of the flies and unhygienic conditions (in tent village). It is very difficult to survive in the tents," she said, adding that they needed winterised tents urgently.
    But concerned authorities say there were just not enough winter tents in the world to meet the need and people now had to be helped to build their own shelter out of the ruins of their old homes.
    The immediate goal was to get 10,000 winterised shelter kits to people living at altitudes above 5,000 feet (1,500 metres). The kits include corrugated iron sheeting and other basic building material.
    In Muzaffarabad a women and her three children were injured when their tent caught fire on Thursday (December 01) night, compelling police to urge people not to light fires inside tents for warmth.
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