Archive for South Asia

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health official denies cholera cases

August 15, 2010 Agency South Asia

Peshawar, Aug 15(ANI): Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Director-General of Health, Dr. Sajid Shaheen, has contradicted the reports about cholera case in the province.

Dr. Sajid said that the health teams deputed in the affected areas had been reporting complaints of watery diarrhoea, but there was no report of cholera as yet.

“The situation is extremely precarious in Swat, but our teams have established a surveillance system to check epidemics,” The Dawn quoted Dr. Shaheen, as saying. 

“People are suffering from acute watery diarrhoea, but the situation is under control,” he added.

The United Nations fears that hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk from disease after Pakistan’s devastating floods.

So far, the UN has confirmed only one case of cholera, but other cases are suspected among those with diarrhoea.

Mark Ward, acting director of the US department for foreign disaster assistance, said cholera was “unavoidable”, but could be controlled.

“The good news is that we know where it is and we can get resources in there to help because of the disease early warning system,” Ward said.
“When you are dealing with this much water and that many people, it (cholera) is almost unavoidable. I think we can control this,” he added.

Cholera, a bacterial intestinal infection typically spread through contaminated water, causes severe diarrhoea and dehydration and can be fatal. (ANI)

No comments , , ,

UN chief appeals for aid as flood crisis worsens in Pak

August 15, 2010 Agency South Asia

Islamabad, Aug 15(ANI): UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged the world to provide more aid to flood-ravaged Pakistan, as over 20 million people have been made homeless and new torrents inundated villages.

Ban is in Pakistan for talks with government leaders and to see the flood zone.

“I am here to see what more needs to be done and to urge the world community to speed up the assistance to the Pakistani people,” The Dawn quoted Ban, as saying.

The UN had earlier said that Pakistan would need billions of dollars to recover from he unprecedented devastation caused by the country’s worst ever floods.

Over 1,600 people have been killed as raging floodwaters continue to wreak havoc in the country.

UN Special Envoy for Assistance to Pakistan, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said that the UN is still calculating specific figures, but “the emergency phase will require hundreds of millions of dollars and the recovery and reconstruction part will require billions of dollars”.

Ripert also said that the foreign aid could be difficult to procure given the ongoing financial crisis around the world.
The UN has estimated that the deluge, which is being described as the worst in the last 80 years, has affected over four million people.

Relief and rescue work has been hit badly by continuous rains, particularly in the north western region. (ANI)

index

No comments , , , ,

Zardari government accused of diverting 300 million pound Kashmir earthquake aid

August 14, 2010 Agency South Asia

Islamabad, Aug 14(ANI): Pakistani officials have alleged that over 300 million pounds in foreign aid for victims of the October 8, 2005 Kashmir earthquake have been diverted by President Asif Ali Zardari’s government to other causes.

They now fear that the diversion of funds will deter donors from giving further aid after the country’s devastating floods.

Pakistan had received 3.5 billion pounds to rebuild vast swathes of the Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province after the earthquake destroyed the region’s infrastructure.

However, officials said that over 300 million pounds are yet to be handed over to the country’s Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA).

According to officials, schools, hospitals, houses and roads planned with the money remain unbuilt almost five years after the earthquake, The Telegraph reports.

The earthquake had registered a magnitude of 7.6, and the devastation had claimed the lives of over 79,000 people and injured over 1,06,000.

In Balakot, where 5,000 of the town’s 25,000 people were killed in the earthquake, thousands of families were told that their entire town would be rebuilt 10 kilometres away, as the town stood directly in a ‘red zone’ directly above the fault line, the paper reports.

However, the promises are yet to be fulfilled, as not a single new road has been completed nor a building construction begun on the site of “New Balakot”, it added.

Earlier in March 2009, the ERRA officials were told that their budgets were being cut, as money had to be diverted to other government projects.

“When we have the money we will pay you,” the paper quoted a senior official, as saying.

“All the money was given by Western governments, but they said ‘we have so many
other problems’,” he added.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif has admitted that the suspicion among potential donors was hampering the fund-raising effort to help more than 14 million people displaced by the floods.

“There’s reluctance, even people in this country are not giving generously into this flood fund because they”re not too sure the money will be spent honestly,” Sharif said.  (ANI)

index

No comments , , , ,
« Older Entries