Quake patients without homes refuse to leave hospitals

Shelter for post-care quake patients was urgently needed to ease the burden on overcrowded hospitals in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. “Patients refuse to leave the hospitals after treatment as they don’t have homes or shelter,” explained Dr Ahmed el Genainy, working with the crisis health care unit of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the quake-ravaged city, on Friday. “This issue must be resolved immediately as we can’t accept any more patients.” In the immediate aftermath of the quake, only one hospital with a mere 50-bed capacity was partially functioning in the city of 100,000. That number has since improved to eight, with a total bed capacity of just over 700. But with patients refusing to leave after being treated, more beds and other shelter were desperately needed. The 8 October quake that ripped through Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) destroyed most hospitals in the area, leaving most people to fend for themselves. The task of rebuilding the region’s health care infrastructure will be monumental, according to officials. Dire conditions in the city were mirrored throughout much of the district. Ninety percent of Muzaffarabad district’s population of one million were now homeless and 65 percent without food, UK-charity Islamic Relief reported. And with night temperatures dipping to zero degrees Celsius, the provision of shelter was becoming even more critical. In Muzaffarabad city, doctors do what they can in the limited space available, treating about 1,000 people daily on an outpatient basis, with complaints ranging from infected wounds to acute respiratory infections (ARI) and skin diseases. In the first days after the quake hit, more than 450 patients were being evacuated daily, but “yesterday we shifted only six patients to Islamabad”, Genainy said. ARI, diarrhoea, tetanus and measles posed serious health risks, he noted, adding: “We are closely following up the situation to monitor any disease outbreaks.”