BHERI, Nov 30: With winter starting to set in, some survivors of Pakistan’s earthquake are without shelter, sufficient food or warm clothing nearly eight weeks after the disaster struck, aid officials said on Wednesday.
The first heavy snow fell across the region at the weekend but while there has been no spike in the mortality rate, more deaths were inevitable unless aid reaches victims soon, aid officials said.
The focus of the relief effort was shifting towards food, even though shelters were still needed, said Jean-Philipe Bourgeois, a field coordinator for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
“It’s a combined problem. Not only food, not only shelter, but both.”
The Oct 8 earthquake killed 73,000 people, most of them in Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province. Aid officials fear sickness sweeping through a cold and poorly nourished population will cause a second wave of deaths.
But a UN spokesman said there are deaths in the region every winter from cold-related ailments and it would be alarmist to talk of a second wave of fatalities from the cold now.
Chief UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Vandemoortele said reports of deaths brought on by the cold since the harsh weather began were incorrect.
“We have compared data in hospitals. We don’t see any difference in the number of people that died in Muzaffarabad last week as the same week last year,” Vandemoortele said in Muzaffarabad.
But he said diseases such as respiratory tract infections would increase. “Nobody can deny, and nobody will deny, that we are facing a very difficult situation.”
WE NEED SHELTER: Haroonur Rasheed, a resident of a mountain village to the north of Muzaffarabad, said the seven members of his family are sleeping rough, without a tent.—Reuters
