Aftershocks may scar children forever

Nine-year-old Faizan Sudhir Kiyani hasn’t spoken much since the quake that killed two of his siblings and turned his world upside down. It is a scar he must live with for the rest of his life. But with every jolt and aftershock that rocks the mountainous region, he jumps up quickly to cling to his mother. Sitting in the open air in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and not far from the quake’s epicentre, his mother gently strokes his hand as she says her boy is too scared to sleep at night. Faizan is not alone in his fear. There are thousands of children just like him. Aftershocks continue to rattle the nerves of survivors, old and young. Many might never fully recover psychologically. The quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale ripped through Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on 8 October, leaving more than 40,000 dead and three million homeless. Twelve days on, close to 900 aftershocks ranging from 3.5 to 6.2 in magnitude, have been recorded. Some have triggered further landslides in remote areas of the Hindu Kush Mountains. Residents in the affected areas say the seismic activity has been “relentless”. “In the short run, if this continues it can result in psychological trauma, anxiety and depression among children - which in the long term may have serious consequences,” said Dr Ahmed el Ganainy of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Muzaffarabad. “They can develop malnutrition and psycho-social problems that ultimately could cause permanent personality problems,” he added. Even adult patients, many of them seriously injured, refuse to stay inside what remains of the Ayub Medical Hospital in NWFP after two days of incessant tremors. Meanwhile, experts expect the aftershocks to continue for some time, possibly weeks, a prospect that threatens to further hamper relief efforts. In an interview with Pakistan daily The News, Met Office director-general Dr Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said the region was still passing through the “fault creation time” that was expected to last at least three to four weeks. Chaudhry said this phase was still in its second week and likely to continue for more than another week, following which “fault settlement” would likely last at least three to four weeks but could extend for many months. During this period, people in affected areas should avoid buildings that had suffered any structural damage, The News quoted him as saying.