Kashmir quake leaves "more than 50,000 orphans and newly disabled"
The Pakistani Caritas launches an alarm: "There is need to help child quake survivors to overcome their psychological trauma" and to "live with their disabilities".
Islamabad (AsiaNews) The 8 October quake which struck Indo-Pakistani Kashmir has left "an inestimable number of disabled children and adults" as well as "around 50,000 orphans or children separated from their families". The Pakistani Caritas has voiced alarm about conditions facing quake survivors who need physical and psychological support to continue living. The death toll of the quake stands at 55,000 people, half of them children.
Andreas Fabricius, a member of the German Caritas who is spearheading medical relief services in the area said: "These little ones are all traumatized. We must see to their physical and mental health before it is too late." The doctor is leading a first aid team: "So far, we have vaccinated survivors with vaccines from the Pakistan Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation against tetanus, measles, polio and hepatitis A. Now we must focus our efforts on psychological recovery."
Fabricius said that "nearly 1000 aftershocks reaching a magnitude of between 4 and 6 on the Richter scale have hit the zone in these three weeks. They keep us awake at night and keep fear among survivors high: it's not easy to talk about psychological recovery in these conditions".
Rescuers must also "think about the needs of 77,000 wounded people"; many "will remain disabled or maimed for the rest of their lives. There are many adults and children who need prosthesis, but this means teaching them how to keep them clean, how to put them on and how to live with them," continued Fabricius. "They must also learn how to adapt to their new social role which will be entirely different from how they lived before."
Caritas Pakistan has received aid from plenty of NGOs: the Dutch Cordaid sent a gender specialist, Sabra Bano, to help traumatized women. There are also doctors, a surgeon, an orthopedic surgeon, a plastic surgeon and an anaesthetist. The Catholic NGO distributed 1,571 tents, 2,627 blankets and 2,115 first aid and hygiene kits and it continues to sort material arriving from donors around the world.
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09/11/2005
