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DAHW Helping Persons Affected by Worst Flood in Pakistan for Years
Posted on 9 August 2010 by
“The destruction is unimaginable! We cannot see how the country can get help to every corner”. These are the words of a member of the team of the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre, which has been quick to take action to support some of those who have been affected by the severest flooding in Pakistan for years.
“It counts for a lot that our helpers are trusted, because they are so well connected in the villages” says Shakil Ahmad, the Manager of the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi. The workers in Dr Ruth Pfau’s Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre Team are already in the most affected regions. So they have been able to buy foodstuffs on credit from the local markets, wrap them up into packages with sufficient rice, flour, lentils, oil, biscuits and pans and matchsticks for a week. So far they have distributed them to about 1,000 families who need them. Immediately news of the devastating floods in Pakistan broke, ILEP Member, the Deutsche Lepra- und Tuberkulosehilfe (DAHW) set aside € 100,000 for emergency aid and reconstruction work in Pakistan.
The Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre Team has already brought goods by car from Islamabad and Rawalpindi to help those who have been affected in the regions of Nowshera, Charsadda and Mardan in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre workers have once again been collaborating with those who they teamed together with in 2005 to assist people affected by the large earthquake. They are jointly organising emergency stores and distributing medicines. Children, women and the elderly, in particular, are suffering from a lack of water. Shakil Ahmad has informed DAHW that teams provided by the government and aid agencies have already inoculated 100,000 people in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region.
What is more, according to reports from Shakil Ahmad, the floods have considerably worsened the generally overstretched food situation. “There are food shortages throughout the country and prices are now escalating, because supplies have been destroyed”, says the Manager of MALC.
On 3rd August 2010, Dr Christine Schmotzer, told DAHW that only the entrance area to the health station in Balakot was ruined and so everyone was able to quickly pack together a few key items and reach safety.
Along the routes to the south, the masses of water are destroying towns and villages of the southern Punjab. The Indus, one of the largest rivers in Asia, has turned the town of Kot Addu into a lake. The electricity station there can only deliver a fifth of its usual power supply and will eventually have to be turned off.
Press area of the DAHW website: http://www.dahw.de/presse
How you can help: http://www.dahw.de/spenden/projektpartnerschaft/dahw-ruft-zu-spenden-in-pakistan-auf
Dr Ruth Pfau and Dr Christine Schmotzer, who are helping to lead the response efforts of DAHW to the floods, are experienced doctors who know Pakistan well and are no strangers to helping in emergency situations and have helped with similar emergencies in the past.
Dr Pfau helped Pakistan establish its anti-leprosy and tuberculosis programme and founded the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi. Dr Schmotzer leads the Rawalpindi Leprosy Hospital in the north.