Immunisation race starts in quake-hit Pakistan

Kashmiri children who survived the earthquake play with a toy outside their tent in Muzaffarabad. Picture / Reuters

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan - Doctors in earthquake struck Kashmir have begun a campaign to immunise 800,000 children against potentially killer diseases, measles, tetanus, whooping cough, diptheria and polio before the bitter Himalayan winter bites.

Children living in remote mountain villages, cut off by landslides, were particularly vulnerable due to malnutrition because they have access to inadequate food supplies.

"We're doing everything we can to immunise every child in the region," Dr. Tamur Mueenuddin, in charge of health issues for UNICEF in Muzaffarabad, said from the ruined capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

"The target is to immunise 800,000 children. We want to vaccinate them in the next two weeks', weather permitting, before people get into close quarters in camps."

The campaign was led by the Pakistani health authorities, and while an immunisation programme for measles, with a Vitamin A supplement, had already been underway it was decided to accelerate efforts, both in Kashmir and North West Frontier Province -- the other badly hit area in Pakistan.

Dr. Gulshan Rasheed, Assistant Project Officer, UNICEF said the drive would cost five million rupees, and the expense was largely being borne by UNICEF with help from the United Arab Emirates government.

Mueenuddin said one 15-strong medical team had been flown by helicopter into the cut off valleys around Muzaffarabad, and others were following.

"The plan is that they will reside there for a few days, and then walk from village to village, vaccinating every child they come across."

Over 75,000 people, mostly in Pakistani Kashmir, were killed in the October8 quake, and aid agencies have voiced fears that the winter could bring a second wave of death through cold and disease unless survivors receive food and shelter.

Although around 3.3 million people were affected by the quake, another 500,000 are absolutely homeless.

There are already growing alarm over the lack of sanitation in some of the squalid tent camps that sprang up spontaneously in Muzaffarabad, and the authorities are seeking to shift reluctant families to better organised encampments elsewhere in the city.

The World Health Organisation is awaiting test results from samples taken from sufferers of acute watery diarrhoea, to see if cholera has broken out.

At least 300 cases of acute diarrhoea were reported from one camp alone last week.

Mueenuddin said there had been few cases of diptheria, and several tetanus cases so far, along with 40 possible, or presumed cases of measles.

Meanwhile, leaflets written in Urdu were being distributed in camps telling people to keep their homes and tents clean in order to fight the spread of diseases.

"A polluted environment can cause spread of many diseases," said the leaflet. "The basic principles of health and cleanliness should be followed."

A common increasingly evident problem was posed by skin diseases like scabies, due to bad sanitation.

Doctors have also seen a sharp rise in acute respiratory infections, raising fears of pneumonia developing among poorly sheltered and clothed survivors in mountain areas.

"They can easily get pneumonia. They are most vulnerable to chest infection which can lead to severe pneumonia," Asif Nadeem, a surgeon leading a 10-strong medical team in Balakot, one of the worst hit towns in Frontier province.

- REUTERS