Disease warning in quake zone

Doctors struggling with a constant flow of patients in a quake-ravaged Pakistani city warned today that the number of sick could swell dramatically in the coming weeks, as harsh weather creates conditions for pneumonia and other illnesses to spread.

A total of 234 patients with winter-related ailments were admitted within the past 24 hours, said Bashir Rahman, medical superintendent at the Abbas Institute of Medical Science hospital in Muzaffarabad, one of the cities hit hardest by the October 8 earthquake.

Seven had pneumonia, he said.

“The situation now is under control but in the coming days it could get worse, especially for people living at high altitude,” he said.

Dr Abdul Hamid of the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association, which runs a field hospital in Muzaffarabad, said 174 people with respiratory tract infections, flu, fever and pneumonia had been admitted in the past two days.

Fearing a second wave of deaths, soldiers and emergency workers have been racing to get food and proper shelter for the estimated 3.5 million people left homeless by the magnitude 7.6 quake that killed 87,000 people in Pakistan and India.

Most of the deaths were in Kashmir, and Muzaffarabad is the capital of the Pakistan-controlled portion.

Winter’s approach has begun to hamper relief operations to the region’s more remote areas, reachable only by helicopter and only in good weather.

On bad days, mules are often the only way to get in.

Muzaffarabad’s skies were cloudy today, but relief helicopters were flying.

Pakistani soldiers are building 5,000 shelters a day. Aid workers say most of the hundreds of thousands of tents that have already been distributed cannot give quake survivors adequate protection against the cold, and that sturdier corrugated iron shelters should be used.

The army has constructed about 30,000 such shelters.

Officials said they are also especially worried that hundreds of thousands of people who live at the higher elevations may be forced to come down to refugee camps as winter wears on, creating crowded conditions and possibly sanitation problems.

Jan Vandemoortele, the UN’s top aid coordinator in Pakistan, said a “colossal job” remains.

“We remain on a knife’s edge,” he said. “It may get worse before it gets better.”