Entry republished with permission from UM Healthcare
Today we established a camp at Saint Mary’s Secondary School in Risalpur by invitation of Reverend Riaz Mubarik from Abbottabad. Saint Mary’s school is situated next to the beautiful Saint Mary’s Garrison Church, Risalpur. Although there were obstacles initially in getting in and establishing the camp (mostly administrative permissions etc from security forces), once we set up camp we got the real picture of our work ahead.
This was one of the cleanest camps we had seen so far because it was inside the cantt. It was well maintained and had a water supply for the IDPs. There was a mix of both Christian and Muslim community living in the school which has been made into a makeshift IDPs Camp. The residents here are mostly from the Ganderi village of Nowshehra which suffered the highest devastation by the flood waters. There are also a few IDPs from Nowshehra city who have found refuge here. One of the patient’s husband has been missing for the past 5 days.
The school now houses a total of about 230 affectees. The staff and administration of the school and church were very co-operative.
The UM Healthcare team visited the site yesterday for a needs assessment, and learned that that they had not been visited by any health or relief team untill then; either from the public or private sector. I promised Reverend Javed Stephen that we’d return with water and medicines. Today when our team arrived, they welcomed us and told us that although a few people had arrived and taken pictures of their camp, no one had returned as promised- and we were their first relief group.
We set up Camp in class 10 of St. Mary’s school just beside the office of the Principal, Mr. Tahir Anjum. He facilitated us with the provision of beds for patients and in the registration process. Started off at noon due to delays initially in securing permission. At our arrival, Capt. Afzaal of Army Medical Core arrived at our camp and briefed us about their medical activities at Risalpur Cantt. He provided us with valuable guidance on focus of diseases and areas where they required help of NGOs like ours and specific targets such as vaccination to prevent the spread of diseases in the healthy individuals. He treated a couple of patients with me and then begged leave.
The Pakistan Army helped us by providing two male nursing staff brought by Capt. Afzaal with himself, for vaccinating all patients arriving at our clinic against Tetanus and Typhoid. Vaccines were provided by CMH Risalpur. Sometime at the start Geo news team filmed some of our activities but they did not specify when it was going to be aired. No interviews were done.
On day 1 we treated a total of 120 patients:
16 male Pediatric
12 female Pediatric
45 males
47 females
A shop keeper from Bakhshali had donated some packets of Ariel detergent to us for distribution to IDPs. We gave all ladies a packet of Ariel to go with the medicines and bottled water. To all the kids we gave Biscuits and Juice packs from our own supplies. We packed up the camp at 5:00 when we had seen all the patients and given rations to all the families. During the camp we were visited by a delegation of the Reverends council who appreciated our efforts and thanked us.
Also met Reverend Salamat at the camp who invited us to visit the Christ Church at Nowshehra tomorrow. We plan to go there tomorrow with my team and treat the affectees there. About 20 families are living there. After that we intend to set up camp at Nowshehra kallan which the Army informed us is badly hit and only a few teams are working there. So that will hopefully cover all of our activities in Nowshehra and Risalpur.
To see the photostream of our activities, please visit us our Flickr Photo Gallery
Report prepared by Dr. Qasim Nasr, Medical Officer Incharge, UM Healthcare Trust