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| November 29, 2005 | Tuesday | Shawwal 26, 1426 |
UAE offers to rebuild Balakot
BALAKOT, Nov 28: The United Arab Emirates has offered Pakistan to rebuild the city of Balakot destroyed completely by last month’s earthquake. This was disclosed by UAE Army’s Colonel Abdullrahman Ibrahim Bin Abdullaziz to Islamabad-based journalists who visited the UAE Army Field Hospital he is running near Balakot over the weekend.
It is perhaps the first formal offer in response to the reconstruction plan unveiled by President Gen Pervez Musharraf at the November 19 international donors conference.
Col Abdullrahman said he had surveyed and filmed the area from the air for preparing a master plan for rebuilding the devastated city.
Negotiations were already underway between the governments of UAE and Pakistan on the modalities of the UAE’s offer, he said. But he had no details to share about the scale of the job or cost involved.
However his main worry, as of many others concerned about the welfare of the earthquake affected populations, was what happens to the sick and the shelterless when the UAE Army’s field hospital folds up and leaves?
In the six weeks since it set up and started functioning about 8 kilometres from the devastated Balakot on October 12, the field hospital has carried out 319 surgical operations and attended to the medical needs of nearly 24,000 survivors of the killer quake which flattened almost 90 per cent of the buildings in the city and its surroundings.
Though the worst seems to be over, some 600 people continue to report to the hospital on the average every day with quake- and non-quake-related complaints.
Last week’s cases included a woman bitten by a wolf, another knocked down by a run-away cow and 14 persons injured in traffic accidents which have been rising among mountain people unaware of road sense coming down to seek help.
“Many of those we treated had serious wounds. Some had spinal cord injuries and need care over long periods for rehabilitation. We evacuated 49 serious cases to UAE - along with 30 family attendants - for more intensive care. What happens to all of them when we leave?” said Dr Ali Obaid Alali, the Chief Medical Officer of the UAE hospital, with pain written large on his face.
His Pakistani volunteer colleague, Dr Fakhar Hameed, a general surgeon from Faisalabad, sounded even more desperate. He wanted the government to rebuild Balakot’s destroyed hospital facility before the UAE team leaves.
Colonel Abdullrahman however assured that unless the UAE and Pakistani governments decided otherwise, the hospital would continue functioning.
“We are doing it (providing medical help) for the brotherly people of Pakistan and to please Allah. The smiles that we have brought on the faces of the orphans we are taking care of can keep me here for any length of time,” he said.
Col Abdullrahman said that despite their need for help people were unwilling to leave their mountain abodes. People treated of their wounds at the hospital don’t come down even for change of dressings.
“They want the relief to come to them, not they going down to get relief,” he said.
So his doctors have to make field trips every day to take care of the sick, assess isolated families’ needs and deliver same.
His 65-member hospital staff, about one-fourth of them of Pakistani origin, is also running three relief camps where 400 families made homeless by the earthquake are being looked after.
All the expenses on running the fully-equipped hospital, and its other relief operations quake-affected areas in NWFP and Azad Kashmir, are met by the UAE army from its own, not the national budget, he said.
Col Abdullrahman however was too modest to disclose the figure.
All he and his staff would emphasize was that “unlike some other donor countries”, UAE would not deduct operational expenses from the 200 million dollars assistance it announced at the recent international donors conference.
He said the preventive medical unit established by his hospital had succeeded in disinfecting and monitoring of damaged areas in order to prevent spread of infectious diseases and had vaccinated local populations against such diseases.
In addition, it had delivered 5,000 tents to Pakistan army for distribution among the homeless, provided machinery for repair and clearing of 65 kilometres of damaged roads, established four water distillation stations, each of 10,000 gallons capacity per day and provided rations, food for malnourished children and medical supplies to other hospitals in the area.
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