Tetanus kills 22 in quake areas
Bureau Report

MUZAFFARABAD—Tetanus has killed 22 people and lack of food or shelter could threaten thousands more survivors of Pakistan’s massive earthquake unless there is a huge injection of aid before winter closes in, U.N. officials said Thursday. Donors, including Pakistan’s rival India, have pledged $580 million for quake victims, but the United Nations said more resources were needed to save between 2 million and 3 million lives. The Oct. 8 quake is believed to have killed nearly 80,000 people and left more than 3 million homeless. The World Food Program says it needs to distribute more than 500 tons of food aid a day but faces huge logistical constraints because of blocked roads and the mountainous terrain.
Many of the tens of thousands of people injured in the temblor waited at least a week for medical treatment because clinics were destroyed. Infected wounds have become rife. There have been 111 tetanus cases since the quake struck, of which 22 were fatal, said WHO spokeswoman Sacha Bootsma. But she and Pakistani health officials described that rate as low under the circumstances. “It’s an expected situation where we have so many injured people whose wounds become infected because they are not treated in a timely manner”, Bootsma said. She said all hospitalized patients were receiving a serum against tetanus, which occurs when bacteria enter the body through cuts or scratches and infect the nervous system.
With the weather getting colder, health workers have reported a dramatic increase in respiratory diseases but only one suspected case of severe diarrhea in the northern town of Balakot. Less-acute cases of diarrhea are more widespread because of a lack of proper sanitation and hygiene. A government driver with a suspected case of hemorrhagic fever was taken from the town of Bagh, about 40 miles southwest of Muzaffarabad, to an Islamabad hospital, Bootsma said. Blood samples were sent to a laboratory in South Africa for testing, she said. Hemorrhagic fevers, which include such illnesses as Ebola and Marburg, are characterized by a sudden onset, fever, aching, bleeding in internal organs and shock. Temperatures are already dipping below freezing in some areas, and the weather is expected to worsen in coming weeks, potentially cutting off remote valleys where some 800,000 people are believed to lack any shelter. More villagers were moving down from the mountains, said Urooj Saifee, an official with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR has set up three new tent sites in Kashmir’s Jhelum Valley, with a capacity for 24,000 people, but the refugee agency has yet to move into the Neelum Valley, where road access remains difficult, he said. WFP spokesman David Orr said the agency needed money and supplies to meet the daily demand for food. The WFP has yet to reach a half-million people in upland villages, although those communities were believed to have some food stocks, he said.