A friend of mine just forwarded this account of Drs. Sultan and Yusuf from Shaukat Khanum Hospital Lahore. These doctors personally delived relief goods and money to the victims. May Allah bless their efforts.
A team lead by the CEO (Dr. Faisal Sultan) and Medical director(Dr. Asim yusuf) of shaukat khanum memorial cancer hospital drove up to bagh with three trucks full of goods, they only spent couple of days there. Its a nice travelogue written by Medical director will give you more insights of the problems being faced by helping teams.
Dear All
An update on the trip. We estimate the total amount raised in three days was Rs 31 lacs.
The staff in MMD, Housekeeping and Security deserve our thanks for all the help they provided in procuring, packing and securing all the goods / supplies. We couldn’t have done it without them. We set off at 4.30 pm on Friday, although the trucks left later, at around 7 pm. We met up with them at the pre-arranged point at about 3.30 am, early Saturday morning. We had Sehri at a trucker’s café, before setting off on the (as it turned out) very long trip to Bagh. The truck drivers delayed proceedings inordinately, all the way along the journey, by insisting on being paid before setting off, and then again in Pindi, by demanding full payment before proceeding. It took almost an hour to fill the tanks of the five trucks with 1250 litres of diesel, so that we finally set off at Islamabad at 6 am.
Initial progress thereafter was slow but smooth, but we were held up for three hours by an enormous traffic jam along the way, where the military were directing traffic over a bridge. Traffic was one way, with cars, trucks, buses being allowed to flow in one direction for about an hour before stopping it so that those on the other side of the river could cross over. Once we got into the hills, there were locals of all ages along the route, asking for relief goods. It was difficult to know whether or not they were genuine earthquake affectees or just opportunists. We decided to hold on to our supplies and distribute them in Bagh, as originally planned. As we climbed higher, the roads became narrower, more crowded and, in numerous areas were partially obstructed by landslides and rockfalls. Further traffic jams along the way followed. Dr Faisal and Rajab from MMD helped to direct traffic on more than one occasion, but we were still happy to reach Bagh by about 4 pm. We met up with our Army contact, but it still took 2 hours to reach the military base where we had decided to distribute our supplies from. This was a distance of about five miles.
Bagh is a district, but also a town of about 50,000 people. It is in ruins, with about 80% of all buildings affected by severe earthquake damage. The military area is particularly badly affected. The unit we spent the night in only has one office building left standing and lost several officers and men to the earthquake. The locals seem to be wandering the streets somewhat aimlessly- presumably because they have nowhere to live. Other than the military, there does not seem to be any semblance of local government, no police presence and no clearing up operation seems to have begum.
We estimated that over a hundred trucks full of relief goods had rolled into Bagh that day alone. There were several mild attempts by the locals to loot the trucks as they drove through the city, but the day before a much more serious incident had occurred where 100 tents were stolen from a convoy sent from Lahore.
Contrary to the news reports, most local people were very happy to take food from us. They are NOT interested in old clothes. Their greatest need, however, is tents, blankets, quilts and so on. We distributed supplies to some 25 people late on Saturday night, before setting off to see what the medical facilities were like in Bagh. There is an Army field hospital which appears to be reasonably equipped, with a generator and we were also fortunate to come across a team of British Surgeons of Pakistani origin who had set up a small facility in Bagh and were also going out to the surrounding villages to treat patients there. We gave them all the medical supplies we had taken with us, since they plan to be there for another two weeks.
We also met a team of students from LUMS, who were going out to remote villages in the Bagh district to see what the local needs were. Our group of volunteers (Waqas, Rajab, Tariq Burki, Riaz, Saleh Muhammed, Abdur Rehman and Irfat) loaded up two trucks to take supplies out to the villages with the LUMS group on Sunday. We left Bagh at 5 am on Sunday morning and took the alternative route back, via Kohala and Murree, to Pindi. On the way, we stopped at CMH Murree, where we met a team of surgeons from Baqai Hospital, Karachi, who had been operating there for six days. The wards, including the Gynaecology ward, had all been emptied and were being used solely for earthquake victims. They were all full to overflowing. We were very impressed by the care and empathy shown to the patients by all the staff, including the nurses and paramedics. We distributed envelopes containing 3000 rupees to each earthquake-affected patient in the hospital. Two patients refused to take the money. A few got more than one envelope, when the story they told us was particularly tragic. Not very logical, perhaps, but there we are. Murree was bitterly cold yesterday – worth thinking about, considering that there are going to be two million people out in the open there this winter.
We then drove to Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi, which was similarly emptied out to receive casualties. They had a list at the main entrance of the 800 casualties they have admitted so far, and most of their wards, too, have been taken over by survivors of the earthquake. We distributed the remainder of our money there. In total, some 550,000 rupees was distributed as cash to the victims and their families. Again, the hospital seems to have done a fantastic job in looking after all these patients and in organizing themselves so well. They had lists of all patients seen, posters up of children without guardians, lists of unattended children and so on. There was also a booth at the entrance operated by a mobile telephone company which was allowing absolutely everyone to make free telephone calls to anywhere in the country.
We tried our best to make sure that it got to where it was likely to make the most difference to the largest number of people. Much, much more clearly needs to be done.
Aasim Yusuf