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Thousands of Child Survivors of Pakistan Earthquake in Dire Need
Westport, CT (October 14, 2005) –
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A family among the damage in Balakot. |
Save the Children’s relief workers responding to the earthquake in northern Pakistan report a desperate need to reach children and their families in remote areas of the North-West Frontier Province. The agency said today it is receiving increasing reports that children are succumbing to exposure and that cases of gangrene and other diseases are on the rise.
On Friday morning (October 14, Islamabad time) Save the Children sent a helicopter with medicines, drinking water and doctors on board to Alai Tehsil, a remote mountainous area north of Batagram. The assessment mission provided the local health authority with medical supplies and helped evacuate 10 seriously injured children and their caregivers to Islamabad for medical attention.
Bruce Rasmussen, Save the Children USA’s Field Office Director in Pakistan, reported: “This rescue mission is clearly a drop in the ocean. There are hundreds and thousands more children in similar circumstances for whom time is quickly running out. We urgently need more helicopters if we’ve any hope of saving these children.”
“Survivors in remote areas have now been living in the open for a week. Snow is visible from Muzaffarabad town and temperatures continue to drop. Families urgently need tents, bedding and warm clothes,” Rasmussen said.
Save the Children’s Sam Rush, who just returned from Bagh, expressed serious concerns about the state of surviving children in remote mountainous areas. “Aid is not reaching remote hillsides. There is a real danger that we will see further loss of life. Many children who were lucky enough to have survived the earthquake have injuries that need urgent medical attention.”
The flow of assistance to urban areas is increasing despite problems of narrow roads and the risk of landslides. This morning six trucks reached Batagram carrying 375 tents, tarpaulin, milk and medical supplies.
“The relief effort urgently needs more helicopters and more tents if we are to save the children who survived the devastation brought on by the earthquake" said Rudy Von Bernuth, who heads Save the Children USA’s global emergency response team. “Save the Children and others are getting assistance to towns and making every effort to reach remote areas,” he said.
