MUZAFFARABAD, Jan 19: The government has started to rebuild clinics destroyed by October’s huge earthquake as harsh winter fuels fears of disease outbreaks, officials said on Thursday. Authorities in Azad Kashmir said new clinics, which offer free treatment, would nearly double the number of beds which were available before the disaster.

“We have started rebuilding 61 basic health units and seven rural health centres with pre-fabricated materials in Muzaffarabad and the Neelum valley,” local health chief Sardar Mahmood Ahmed Khan told AFP.

Groups including the United Nations Children’s Fund and the UN Population Fund were helping the government with the work.

Around 3.5 million people had lost their homes in the earthquake and the United Nations has warned that hundreds of thousands of people living in tents are at risk of falling ill during the bitter Himalayan winter.

Khan said that before the quake Muzaffarabad had 400 hospital beds but now more than 700 were available, some of them at field hospitals set up by local and foreign aid agencies in remote areas.

They would provide treatment to around 200,000 survivors, he said.

The UN has said that about 1,000 health facilities were destroyed by the quake.

Separately, public works officials said 10 bulldozers and a similar number of excavators donated by Japan were helping to clear landslide-blocked roads.

Meteorologists on Thursday forecast more rain and snow in mountain areas.

“All quake-hit areas are still in the grip of a dying out westerly wave, expected to produce more rain and light to moderate snow over the mountains above 1,828 meters during the next two to three days,” the meteorological department said on its website.