Two years serving children affected by the Pakistan earthquake
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Nawab and his son, Babar, are helping to construct a women’s community center in their village, Rashang. “There is nothing in Islam which is against women learning,” says Nawab. |
On October 8, 2005, the largest earthquake in Pakistan’s history earthquake caused widespread destruction across the country’s rugged northern mountains. Save the Children responded within hours of the disaster, providing essential medical care, food and shelter materials to help families survive the early days of the crisis and the encroaching winter.
Since then, Save the Children has been assisting families in some of the most remote, hard-hit areas of the country. Through our education, health and livelihoods programs, we are providing support to more than 140,000 children and caregivers, helping them recover from this unprecedented disaster and striving to ensure that services for children in this underserved region will be better than ever before.
Revitalizing Education
In any disaster, getting children into school is fundamental to helping them cope with the changes in their lives, regain their resiliency and return to a more normal routine. Save the Children prioritized education and protection programs in the Allai Valley after the earthquake, an area where literacy rates were dismal before the crisis (only 3.5 percent of men and less than 1 percent of women are literate, according to the district government). Currently, we support 136 government schools that serve more than 11,000 children. Each school is provided with a transitional classroom structure that will last for several years — until government schools can be rebuilt — as well as a package of teaching and learning materials. Save the Children is working with communities, teachers and the government to promote educational excellence through training, support for planning and monitoring, and working with parents and community elders to increase enrollment, improve teacher attendance, support school-based activities and hold the government accountable for education quality.
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Bakshaan holds one of 20 chickens received as part of Save the Children’s livelihoods program in the Allai valley. These animals will provide her and her siblings with eggs to eat, and give her mother, a young widow, something to sell in the local market. |
Health and Nutrition
In the aftermath of the earthquake, Save the Children provided emergency medical services to thousands of children and parents who were injured in the quake or became sick due to lack of shelter. Now, we have partnered with the World Bank and Government Health Department to revitalize health services across an entire disaster-hit district, ensuring that more than 300,000 people have access to quality health services. Save the Children continues to operate a rural health center in the remote Allai Valley, where more than 90,000 patients have received treatment to date.
Additionally, Save the Children is addressing nutrition issues brought on by poverty and contributing to low school enrollment. A community-based nutrition program provides children under 5 and their mothers with a range of services, from supplements given at home to in-patient care for the most critical cases. Older children receive vitamin A supplements and treatment for worms through an in-school program. Education about hygiene and nutrition are a key component of both projects.
Rebuilding Livelihoods
With chronic poverty already affecting the prospects of many children in Pakistan's rural areas, the earthquake's destruction of livestock, household assets, agricultural infrastructure and local workplaces threatened to push already poor families into desperate circumstances. Since the earthquake, Save the Children has provided more than 6,000 families with cash and food to reconstruct community infrastructure such as grain mills and irrigation channels, which support the area's agricultural economy. Despite traditions that make it difficult for most women to leave their homes, Save the Children has been able to form a strong relationship with local communities and launch training and work programs for women, such as kitchen gardening and stove-making. We also have opened five women's community centers. As communities began to recover, Save the Children provided goats, chickens, fruit trees and other assets to 1,500 families and is now exploring new strategies to help communities improve their long-term economic well-being.
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Receiving de-worming medication as part of Save the Children’s school health and nutrition program. This intervention addresses the chronic illness and undernourishment which leads many children, but particularly girls, to drop out of school. |
Inside a Hospital in Rural Pakistan
Like many communities across northern Pakistan, the almost 200,000 people living in the Allai Valley were left with no health care after the earthquake destroyed the local hospital and clinics. Just two weeks after the disaster, Save the Children began providing the valley's children and families with lifesaving health care, including the delivery of babies, in a temporary rural health center. Now working to revitalize the network of government health facilities spread across the district, Save the Children continues to operate the hospital, which is housed in a semi-permanent, 15-bed tent donated by AmeriCares.
Located at the edge of Allai's only moderately sized town, the hospital opens early one morning. Along the road, pregnant women and those too ill to walk are transported by animal or carried on a makeshift stretcher fashioned from charpoy, a local-style string bed. Some of them have traveled for hours from mountain villages only accessible by footpath.
"Every day, at least 150 people come to the hospital," says Dr. Qayum, Save the Children's health manager. "Even though we have been working here for two years, the number of patients continues to increase, particularly the number of pregnant women who come for check-ups or to deliver their baby."
Before Save the Children arrived, there was only one trained birth attendant in the entire valley. For the first time, women in Allai have the opportunity to deliver in a clean, safe environment with a trained professional and an ambulance available to transport them to the nearest city if necessary — and the word has spread. "We used to do only a few deliveries each month," explains Dr. Qayyum, "Now it averages more than 20."
Farhan* has walked more than 10 kilometers to the hospital with his mother, who shields her face in a light blue burqa while her son is examined. He is suffering from respiratory infection, a leading cause of child death alarmingly common in this mountainous area. Dr. Sarbland, a government doctor, diagnoses Farhan and provides his mother with a prescription, detailed instructions for using the medication and arranging a follow-up visit, and advice about preventing the illness from spreading to other children. Farhan and his mother collect his medicine, provided free of cost at the on-site pharmacy, before heading home.
Dr. Sarbland is employed by the government, but he receives extensive support, such as on-job training, from Save the Children. His patients benefit from the clean facility, well-stocked pharmacy and other infrastructure that the agency provides. "The hospital and equipment here are far better than what we had even before the earthquake," he says. "There are always medicines available now."
"Rather than create a new system that depends on our support," explains Dr. Qayyum, "Save the Children has worked to revive and improve what people already have. Resources are used most effectively this way, and the improvements we make are long-lasting, especially as communities realize that quality health care is attainable and that they can work with the government to make sure it is available."
Asma*, one of the last patients of the day, holds her father's hand as she is examined and diagnosed. While he reviews the medicines they are given, Asma smiles at the hospital staff and other patients.
"Everyone in our family comes to this hospital now," Asma's father explains. "We know Save the Children well. They have been here with us since our darkest days after the earthquake and continue to make sure our children are healthy and well."
*Name has been changed
