Chasms in information in Pakistan earthquake

Health information is not reaching those most in need. With the earthquake creating massive problems from injury and increasing disease, people need good health information – but what’s known is not reaching those in need.

(14 Oct 05)

In the recent catastrophic earthquake in Northern Pakistan, gangrene is now infecting small and major injuries far away from health facilities and where facilities are destroyed, and WHO is warning of the spread of disease through contaminated water - with potential outbreaks of dysentery, cholera, pneumonia, tetanus, malaria, and measles.

WHO says there's a desperate need for bottled water, volunteer health workers, vaccines, anaesthetics, antibiotics, intravenous fluids, basic painkillers, respiratory equipment including ventilators, along with disposable supplies such as bandages, gowns and masks.

The situation's obviously overwhelming, but there is another great unmet need: for the most basic health information – how to deal with what, where, and in the simplest possible way.

Aliya Qadir Khan, technical officer for Health and Development Services, The Network, a health advocacy group in Islamabad, told members of the HIF-Net discussion list yesterday (13 October) that although the Pakistan government had set up help lines to provide some information “that is not enough”. Volunteer health workers are not getting the information they need to “gear themselves up” to match the needs of their chosen target area, he said. “This lack of information is making the situation more chaotic,” said Aliya.

And in a WHO press teleconference the following day, Altaf Musani, WHO Operations Manager for the earthquake, reporting from Muzaffarabad, told RealHealthNews that Aliya’s point "hits the nail on the head".

WHO had to do everything they could to correct that, he said. A major problem was that the great knowledge that exists about health care in such emergencies was not widely enough known, nor being widely enough applied.

Keumars Kosh-Chashm, a WHO consultant, speaking from Balakot, said "everything was flattened" and people rescued were dying even before they could get on to helicopters to hospital. And Islamabad hospitals are now overflowing. Dysentery was growing, though not yet out of hand, and Kosh-Chashm made an impassioned plea for large amounts of fresh bottled water.

The fears WHO had expressed about major disease outbreaks were justified, Musani told RealHealthNews. And the uninjured and treated injured had nowhere to shelter – so more tents were vital to prevent diseases like pneumonia.

In the mountains whole villages had been "wiped away" said Musani, and “all you could see were white streaks on the hillsides where they had been”.

Health staff were also in desperately short supply. Musani called for young, able health professionals to come and help.

RealHealthNews also asked whether any operational research was being done to gather information on the success – or otherwise – of the emergency health operations, for use in other emergencies later in the region, or elsewhere, and Musani said that that was being done, though not by researchers.

An aftershock took place as Kosh-Chashm and Musani were speaking, and yet another occurred shortly after. - RW

top