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Pakistan Flood Relief: Field Notes from Doctors to Sukkur – Day 2

If there is anything the government should learn from this flood, it is to take education and women empowerment more seriously. The enormous task of taking care of so many IDPs iz only magnified many fold by lack of a good base. If these IDPs were a little better educated it would have been so much easier for the govt. to house them. How can a mother take care of 10-15 children? It is simply not possible. Corroborating Dr Nighats experience when told about family planning theyre responses were ‘have you no fear of Allah’ or ‘our husbands want it-they beat us’ Many females do understand but the men dont.

A woman came to one of our camps today asking for birth control pills an amazing happening, to our shame- we had none with us – I wonder if medical teams should carry IM depoprovera-council them and administer?

We went to 3 camps today All of them were tent villages

it is good that people are being moved from schools, not all of the desks will become firewood
please make a note that after the floods are over much help will be

Pakistan Flood Relief: Field Notes from Doctors to District Khairpur – Day 1

Dr. Nighat Shah’s brief about our trip:

Khairpur at this moment is housing huge bulk of displaced people from Larkana, Jacobabad, Shikarpur, and many smaller villages like thul, ghouspur etc. The registered displaced people are more than 50,000. Around 120 camps are housing people in small clusters. These range from 250-300 people in smaller schools to 5000-8000 in bigger schools.

In all camps, the majority is of children and the statistics are mind boggling! In a camp at Ghari Mori, district Khairpur, housing 280 people, there were 44 men, 67 women and 169 children. Almost all children are sick, ranging from stunted growth, severe malnourishment, diarrhoea and skin problems. Almost all women are anemic, weak, malnourished, perpetually pregnant or breast feeding, and the sad part is that there is no milk but the baby is still latched, always! More than 20-25 percent are pregnant.

Brief review of our activities- Day 1

As a team comprising of a retired pediatrician (working at SOS villages), a local gynecologist / obstetrician, 2 soon to be graduates from AKU and I, a recent Masters in Public Health graduate from Harvard and an instructor in the Dept. of General Surgery, AKU, Karachi, visited displaced peoples camps in District Khairpur.

We left around 7 a.m. for the visit but worked early in the morning to organize the medicines available in boxes so prescription would be faster. The hospitality of our hosts is of tremendous. I had to have two cups of tea in the morning (that is more than I drink in a year :-). They do not let you work until you are well provided for and do not stop asking you to drink up and eat up. Continue Reading