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News Archive News from HealthServe: CMF appeals to its members to ‘give and go’ to help Kashmir Earthquake victimsOctober 2005
CMF appeals to its members to ‘give and go’ to help Kashmir Earthquake victims
Christian Medical Fellowship has just launched a Kashmir Earthquake Appeal asking its 5,500 members ‘to give and to go’ to help the victims of the Kashmir Earthquake on 8th October.
The move comes on the day of a UN appeal for urgent help to avoid a massive second wave of deaths over the fierce Himalayan winter. An estimated three million people in Pakistan lack adequate shelter after the catastrophe and Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf has said that the amount of foreign reconstruction aid pledged after the South Asia quake is ‘totally inadequate’. Pakistan has already confirmed 49,739 deaths, most of them in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. India says more than 1,400 have died in the sector of Kashmir it administers.
CMF General Secretary Peter Saunders said, ‘Many millions in the affected areas are now struggling with no access to food, housing, healthcare, or other essential services and resources. As winter closes in, hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake. Major aid is needed now to ensure that people survive the winter, and that the process of rebuilding lives and communities can begin.’
’CMF has members working long-term in the affected region, and through them has been able to devise a strategy to help, both with short-term emergency work and also in the long-term rebuilding process.’
Allied Professions Secretary Steve Fouch, who is coordinating the project, outlined the plans, ‘One hospital in the affected area, with which we have excellent links, is distributing packs of food, blankets and tents to those in remote villages decimated by the earthquake. Plans are also underway for long-term reconstruction. CMF members can help either by giving or by going.’
’£50 buys a pack that could save a whole family in the short-term. £100 helps get a winterised tent to that family to help them survive the coming snows. £250 either buys either a box of medicines worth £2,500, which can supply the medical needs of 1,000 people, or other much needed medical equipment.’
’Members of CMF can also use their skills to help deal with the vast number of traumatic injuries and other emerging health problems in the aftermath. CMF has received requests for health professionals (particularly general and orthopaedic surgeons, trauma specialists, theatre nurses etc.) who could go for varying periods of time to help support the ongoing medical relief efforts.’
‘The WHO has reported that the injured continue to arrive at health facilities with injuries such as broken or crushed limbs, head, spinal and chest trauma needing urgent attention. As the days pass, open wounds are becoming increasingly infected with many cases of gangrene have been reported. Hospitals that survived the 'quake are working at beyond full capacity.’
CMF has set up an online giving facility at www.cmfrelief.givengain.org where you can go to give now.
Further information can be obtained from Steve Fouch in the CMF office (email healthserve@cmf.org.uk telephone 020 7928 4694).
