Vaccines for children who survived the quake
Mansehra (AsiaNews) ""Oghi is high up in the mountains," says Christina Osiander, a volunteer doctor from Caritas Germany who leads a Caritas vaccination team, "at around 4,500 feet (1,350 m)."
Travelling to Oghi takes about half a day and once there, the pressure is to vaccinate as many children as possible. But Ms Oriander's team of students and nurses, coordinated by Dr Ajmal, is highly motivated.
They travel every day to vaccinate and come back to Caritas base camp in Mansehra late at night, exhausted.
"Today was a really busy day," Ms Osiander said. "We vaccinated about 1,200 children."
"I am amazed at how motivated they are," she explained. "The team stays overnight in the rural health centre where there is no light, no washing facilities and otherwise very primitive conditions."
"A volunteer community health worker, Munir, came for the first time today," Osiander noted, "but as we were waiting for the vaccines to arrive at the vaccination point, I noticed that he had already started talking to the people waiting there about water and sanitation and hygiene and the people responded to him."
"We need community health workers who can do such exceptional work," she said, "without waiting to be told but who just know spontaneously what to do."
Among the volunteers there are also nuns who take turns every week.
"Sister Mercia returned from Oghi today and Sister Michelle replaced her duty," Osiander said.
And there is no shortage of volunteers in Mansehra. "The Executive District Office (EDO)," Osiander said, "allocated specific regions to Caritas, and other organisations work in other areas to avoid duplication."
"Our program in Oghi and the surrounding villages should continue for another two to three weeks," she added, "and then if more areas need to be covered the EDO would allocate those to Caritas."
According to Osiander, by the time they finish their work in Oghi and surrounding area, Caritas will already have another plan that involves visiting people who are camped in the tent villages and at the sides of their collapsed houses.
The new Caritas health team will comprise a local community health worker, a doctor, a midwife and a birth attendant who will operate in the surrounding villages of Boi, Dilola, Mehra and others.
But everything has to come to an end, and the volunteer doctor will return to Germany this coming Sunday.
Recalling her first impressions on her arrival, she said that she "was very despondent".
"I found it chaotic," she remembers, "because it seemed there was no structure". But within days she had changed her mind.
"Streamlining tasks to relevant skills became clearer and I realised that it must be normal for chaos to arise immediately after a disaster," she said.
Soon her work in Pakistan became systematic, and she experienced a high sense of satisfaction for contributing her skills among those who needed it most.
"I have never I have never worked in a disaster zone before," she says, "and this experience in Pakistan will be unforgettable for me."
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