Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Islamabad (Agenzia Fides) - True to its mission the local Catholic aid agency Caritas is helping people most in need after the devastating earthquake in Kashmir.
A Caritas Pakistan team led by Dr Andreas Fabricius sent by Caritas Germany, has arrived the village of Balakot to assist patients at the Leprosy Centre completely destroyed in the recent earthquake. The team, which has come with food as well as medicine, found the patients entirely without help and no sight of local nurses and doctors.
Dr Fabricius said 15 days after the quake this is still a situation of emergency. Medical assistance is urgently needed. Some of the injured were taken to hospitals in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, but only a few. Many, in more serious conditions and unable to travel were treated locally with makeshift means. But the great majority of the injured have had no assistance at all because there are no doctors, surgeons or anaesthetic in the area.
Voluntary doctors and nurses from other countries work with great difficulty without equipment or medicine, hospitals wards, structures, refrigerators to store medicines, or blood for transfusions or containers for storage. “This is a health emergency and it is very serious”, said Dr. Fabricius.
The local Caritas is doing all it can to provide medical assistance, calling in medical and nursing personnel from other parts of Pakistan and even from India.
“We are putting up a field hospital in North West Frontier Province and asking local people to lend us a room for a patient” said Dr Frabricius. Caritas is also trying to bring help to mountain villages some of them at 2,700mt above sea level.
A Caritas team is on its way to Battagram village where 500 people are said to be injured. The team, which carries medical equipment and medicine, will have to walk the last 24 km on foot along mountain paths. The World Health Organisation is distributing doses of vaccine against tetanus, typhoid and cholera and vitamins. Caritas personnel works with the Pakistan army which provides logistical help and transport.
In its work Caritas Pakistan, opened in 1965, has the benefit of years of experience and the good relations built in 40 years of humanitarian assistance in Pakistan.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides 26/10/2005 righe 30 parole 309)
