PESHAWAR, Oct 16: About 80 per cent of health facilities have been destroyed in the quake-hit areas, health officials said on Sunday. “We do not have any data about the extent of the damage, but roughly 80 per cent of our facilities, including BHUs, dispensaries, Tehsil Headquarters Hospital, Balakot and District Headquarters Hospital, Mansehra have been badly damaged by last week’s tremor,” an official said.

He said that patients and injured people were being directly shifted to Peshawar hospitals because of the non-availability of treatment facilities there. He said that a field hospital had been established in Mansehra having operation theatres, recovery rooms and laboratories of fibre-glass.

“We still want more specialists, pathologists, psychiatrists to provide specialist treatment to the people,” he added.

He said that a 1,000-bed makeshift hospital had been established in Mansehra, while the district headquarters hospitals in Abbottabad and Mansehra had been upgraded to cope with a number of casualties.

He said that private hospitals in Abbottabad and Mansehra were playing an active part in providing treatment to the people, and added that most of the patients needed the help of general and orthopaedic surgeons, besides medical and ENT specialists and nursing staff.

The official said that the World Health Organization had provided three emergency medical kits to the provincial government which was being used for the wounded people, and added that one kit was enough for a population of 10,000 people for three months.

He said that they needed more resources to reach inaccessible areas and retrieve the bodies beneath the debris, provide treatment to the injured and bury the dead.

He said that relief activities were being concentrated in Mansehra, Abbottabad and other accessible areas, while the affected population in inaccessible areas direly awaited assistance.

He said that in Balakot efforts were being made to establish tented hospitals to provide first aid to the injured people before shifting them to big hospitals of the country.

A doctor, who arrived here from Balakot after taking part in relief activities there for three days, said that coordination among the relief teams and workers could make a difference because the present pace of relief activities was extremely slow and was unlikely to yield the desired result. He said that the people desperately needed tents, medicines, food and water.

The doctor said that the people also needed vaccination against malaria and other diseases.

He said that thousands of trucks loaded with relief items were being driven to the affected parts of the province but lack of coordination among relief workers and agencies was badly hampering work.

He said that the people had shown immense courage and generosity to help the affected people in these troubled times, but urged the government to bring relief efforts under a central authority that could coordinate the efforts.

The deputy director health, Dr Fayyaz Ali, said that some of the donor agencies and private organizations had contacted the health department, while most of the organizations and groups had directly sent their relief goods to the area.