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Sickness begins to take its toll on quake survivors

Sickness is increasing among Pakistani earthquake survivors, a UN official said yesterday, after the government dramatically increased the death toll from the disaster.

The government said on Wednesday the toll had jumped to 73,276 dead from a figure of 57,600 given a day earlier. The sharp rise could be related to concerted efforts to clear debris since the Oct. 8 quake, a top relief official said.

Pakistani Kashmir and adjoining North West Frontier Province bore the brunt of the 7.6 magnitude quake, which also seriously injured more than 69,000.

It was the strongest to hit South Asia in 100 years and left more than 3 million people in need of emergency shelter with the bitter Himalayan winter approaching.

The UN, heading an international relief effort, says donors have failed to provide sufficient funds for emergency aid work. It says that as many people as died in the quake could perish in the winter unless help reaches them fast.

"The situation is beginning to get quite desperate," the chief UN disaster coordinator, Rashid Khalikov, said in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

"We have noticed a sharp increase in acute respiratory infection that can cause pneumonia," he said.

He said seven deaths from water-borne diarrhea had been reported from a town in North West Frontier Province, although there had been no reports of deaths from exposure.

The UN children's fund says measles is also spreading in the cramped tent settlements and it is launching a vaccination drive in the coming days.

"What worries us most is the dramatic increase in vulnerability of the population, and there are not so many coping mechanisms that they have to deal with this," Khalikov said.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf earlier this week urged survivors living in communities high in the mountains to move to lower ground for the winter, saying they would not survive in emergency tent shelters.

However, aid workers say many are reluctant to leave behind crops, livestock and the remains of ancestral homes to move into lowland tent villages.

Khalikov said the top priority was people living at 1,500m, and there were at least 150,000 of them in two areas of Northwest Frontier Province alone, he said.

It was unclear how many people in all might be heading to lower, warmer areas as the harsh winter set in, he said.

"It is very difficult to plan. It has never happened before. We can only guess whether they will come down or not and when they will come down," Khalikov said.

Meanwhile, in India, the road leading to the heavily militarized frontier with Pakistan has been cleared ahead of the planned opening of quake relief camps next week, an official yesterday.

India's Border Roads Organization cleared debris and landslides from the Oct. 8 quake, making it up to the last point on the Indian side of Kashmir, said Brigadier S.S. Dasaka, the chief engineer of the organization.
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