Middle East Health eNews

Men load medicine from a WHO warehouse in Islamabad. -- © WHO/Syed Haider

Gulf states have stepped up to the plate in a major effort to provide much need aid to flood-ravaged Pakistan.

The latest initiatives – according to an IRIN News report on 26 August is that Saudi Arabia has sent 130 rescue workers to Pakistan with relief equipment including motorboats, vehicles and generators.

Saudi King Abdulalh has also ordered the dispatch of two 200-bed field hospitals. Each hospital has an operation room, laboratory, pharmacy, intensive care unit and X-ray room.

The UAE Red Crescent is sending medics to Pakistan and launching a US$100,000 vaccination programme to protect young women and children from disease.

The UAE Red Crescent has been running a telethon in the and as of yesterday had raised Dh75 million (about $20.5million). The telethon continues today and tomorrow.

According to WAM news agency, the UAE has also sent 50,000 blankets, 12,000 tents, 220,000 food packets, 6,000 mineral water bottles, food utensils, 227 tons of dates and medicines.

WAM says two teams of UAE doctors are working in Peshawar and Jacobabad and are vaccinating 6,000 women and children in coordination with UNICEF.

The UAE Air Force has also sent a number of Chinook helicopters to assist the Pakistani army with relief efforts.

The Qatar Charity, in collaboration with the UN World Food Programme, has distributed $1.92 million worth of food parcels to affected families since mid-August. The charity has set up an “air bridge” to fly in relief to Pakistan in cooperation with Qatar Airways. It also said it would airlift 80 tons of emergency relief items worth $604,229.

IRIN reports that the Qatar Red Crescent Society distributed aid to 3,200 families in the first stage of its relief operations.

Kuwait has said it will double aid to Pakistan to $10 million.

Bahrain is to send urgent humanitarian aid worth $2.6 million, according to Bahrain News Agency.

Dr Hussein A. Gezairy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, has appealed to the international community to double its response effort to the floods hitting parts of Pakistan. Dr Gezairy called for preventive measures to be undertaken to halt the outbreak of infectious and waterborne diseases among nearly 20 million flood-affected people, suffering from severe illness, hunger and loss of shelter and property.  

credit: © Abdul Majeed Goraya/IRIN

The Regional Director is expected to make a field visit to Pakistan to assess the situation and follow up on the relief work and health services being provided by WHO, in collaboration with other UN agencies and humanitarian organisations in flood-stricken provinces.

He pointed out that in previous floods, many deaths among victims had not resulted from drowning or directly from the disaster, but rather from the terrible situation following the floods, particularly the acute shortage of food and potable water, disease outbreaks such as cholera and typhoid, deteriorating healthcare services, insufficient numbers of health personnel and increasing mortality among children as a result of measles and polio.

Dr Gezairy added that there had been nearly 1,600 deaths, in addition to tens of thousands of people inflicted with diarrhea, malaria, skin diseases, respiratory and eye infections, reptile bites and insect stings.

He said that the disaster in Pakistan was an example of the perils of man-made climate change of which WHO and environmental activists have been warning. He noted that victims of the Pakistani flood outnumbered the total number of victims of the 2004 Tsunami, the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti combined.

It is expected that this phenomenon will increase globally with  tens of millions of  people vulnerable to malaria, hunger and water shortages over the next decades.

“To reduce the risks [of climate change] greenhouse gas emissions have to be reduced which requires a reversal of global bad practices contributing to the problem,” said Dr Gezairy.