An infant and a middle-aged man who survived the devastating earthquake in the Himalayan highlands became the first confirmed victims today of what officials fear will be a new disaster for the 3.5 million Pakistanis who lost their homes - the winter.
Air Commodore Andrew Walton, commander of Nato response team
Troops and aid workers are building shelters as fast as they can for the neediest. But with heavy rains and a fresh blanket of snow over the last two days heralding the onset of the region's harsh winter, it isn't fast enough for those who have been living rough since the October 8 earthquake that killed more than 87,000 people.
"If we don't get people into shelters, they will die. It's as simple as that," said Air Commodore Andrew Walton, commander of the Nato disaster response team in Pakistan. "That's the second disaster that's waiting to happen if we in the international community don't do something about it," he said at a Nato field hospital in Bagh, a town in Pakistan's part of disputed Kashmir.
A middle-aged man died at the hospital early today, a day after he was brought in with hypothermia, said Lt Col Johan de Graaf, the facility's senior medical officer. Three-month-old Waqar Mukhtar died of pneumonia hours after he was brought in from nearby Neelum Valley, said Abdul Hamid, a doctor at a hospital in the regional capital, Muzaffarabad.
More than 100 people were brought to hospitals in the region with hypothermia and respiratory diseases. That doesn't include the hundreds of women, children and the elderly already suffering from a variety of ailments even before the first cold snap.
Dozens lined up outside the Nato hospital, shivering in a cold rain. Ten-year-old Mohammed Shafi waited for cough medicine, drawing a brown shawl around his shaking body and slipping off his sandals to rub his bare feet together in a fruitless fight to stay warm.
The bad weather also blocked roads and grounded helicopters as troops raced against the approaching Himalayan winter to ferry aid to remote areas. Walton said it was critical to get more shelter materials and medical teams quickly to high-altitude areas.