Remote quake survivors found

NEARLY six weeks after Pakistan’s killer earthquake, people with untreated injuries are still being brought down from remote mountain settlements.

A villager trekked out of the mountains to the east of Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, this week and told an aid group that people were still lying injured in three tiny, remote settlements.

The information was passed to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is operating nine helicopters as part of aid efforts.

ICRC spokeswoman Jessica Barry said: “We took the helicopter out and with a lot of difficulty we found these places and we brought back nine people with fractures that had not been treated at all since the earthquake.”

Three of those rescued on Monday were girls aged three, five and 10 and the other six were adults, three of them over 70, she said. Others were treated on the spot for infected wounds.

The October 8 quake killed more than 73,000 people in northern Pakistan and seriously injured tens of thousands more.

A cash-strapped international aid effort is trying to ensure more than 2 million survivors get enough food and shelter to see them through the looming bitter Himalayan winter.

But aid officials say that time is running out and many more could die.

Some hard-hit areas are still cut off by landslides triggered by the quake that swept away roads. No one knows how many people are still stranded.

The UN had been hoping to launch an airlift yesterday to take nearly 1,000 tonnes of food and shelter into the Neelum Valley, where about 150,000 people are cut off. But the six-day operation was postponed for a day because of mechanical problems.

While the UN is trying to get supplies to high-altitude settlements, a stream of people is heading down to the valleys where tent camps have sprung up and sickness is spreading.

One camp in Muzaffarabad has had more than 500 cases of acute watery diarrhoea in the past week and aid workers are scrambling to improve sanitation.

It was a similar story in North West Frontier Province, at the northern end of the quake zone.

In one of the worst-hit towns, Balakot, army doctor Bilal Shahsaid: “So far it’s not an epidemic, but every day we receive cases of diarrhoea, old and young.

“This may be due to lack of access to clean water, and others have no education about hygiene.”

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due to meet aid donors in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Saturday to assess how the world can help as the scale of the disaster becomes clearer.

Donors have given only a fraction of the $550 million the UN asked for, just for a six-month emergency operation over the winter.

Aid officials say the world must not ignore a second looming disaster.

UN official Pat Duggan said: “It would be really important if this conference provided an opportunity to remind people of the seriousness and enormity of the task ahead of us.”