‘This is worse than the tsunami’

THE UN’s top relief official has warned that the aid shortfall for Pakistan’s earthquake victims has led to a logistical nightmare and made the situation worse than after the Indian Ocean tsunami last year.

“This is not enough. We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse,” Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief co-ordinator told journalists yesterday.

Mr Egeland said at least half a million people in Pakistani Kashmir were still out of reach in the mountainous region following the 7.6 magnitude earthquake some two weeks ago.

“The race against the clock is also like no other one. There is a terrible cut-off for us in the beginning of December, maybe even before, when there will be massive snowfalls in the Himalaya mountains.

“Tens of thousands of people’s lives are at stake and they could die if we don’t get to them in time,” Mr Egeland said.

The international community needed to set up a “second Berlin airlift”, he added, referring to a western air shuttle that overcame the blockade of the German city in the late 1940s.

An estimated three million people were without useable homes and in need of shelter, while about 67,000 people were seriously injured, according to the UN official. The UN says there have been 48,000 confirmed deaths.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), meanwhile, reported three quake survivors died of tetanus, reinforcing fears that disease and infected injuries could drive the death toll far higher.

Sarfaraz Tan Afridi, leader of the WHO team in the province, said his team was trying to immunise as many people as possible.

NATO was expected to approve the dispatch of medics and hundreds of military engineers to clear roads and help reconstruction. However, allied commanders said it would be hard to muster enough of the light helicopters needed for flying in remote mountain areas to mount the campaign envisioned by Mr Egeland.

Helicopters loaded with food and other supplies and soldiers on foot fanned out from the shattered city of Muzaffarabad in the heart of the earthquake zone in a frantic attempt to get help to remote villages damaged in the October 8 tremor.

Aid workers fear casualties will rise because communities without adequate food, shelter or health care will soon face the harsh Himalayan winter. Snow already has begun to fall in high mountains, and some villages already have freezing temperatures at night.

Many people who have walked out of the mountains to aid stations in Muzaffarabad have infected wounds, said Brig Zafar Gondal, a doctor who runs a Pakistani army field hospital. “We are doing whatever is possible,” he said.

The UN Children’s Fund said as many as 120,000 children remained without access to aid and warned that 10,000 could die from hypothermia, hunger and disease in coming weeks if no relief reached them.