PESHAWAR, Nov 15: The Plastic Surgeons’ Association of Pakistan has appealed for urgent donation of medicines and equipment to save the lives of survivors of last month’s earthquake without limb amputation. “We need the services of plastic surgeons, equipment and medicine to save people from amputation of their legs and hands,” said the association’s president Dr Abdul Hameed.

Talking to Dawn, he said his organization had been providing free reconstructive surgery service to the survivors in Abbottabad for three weeks. He said 80 to 85 operations had been performed per week.

“About 40 per cent of the patients are children and 40 per cent women,’’ he said.

He said the association also needed at least four teams of plastic surgeons in Mansehra and Balakot as most of the patients were coming to Abbottabad from there.

He said hundreds of people operated on by orthopaedic surgeons for fractures needed reconstructive surgery to cover up their wounds and avoid infection.

He said foreign doctors had established a field plastic surgery hospital in Muzaffarabad but patients with complications had to be taken to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad.

He said teams of plastic surgeons from French, the United States, Italy, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates had established field hospitals in Mansehra but they could not reach all the affected people.