ISLAMABAD, 6 December 2005 — Aid workers were immunizing children in earthquake-ravaged Pakistan yesterday after a number of measles cases were detected at a survivors’ camp, officials said.
Furthermore, as predicted by the United Nations and other agencies, death rate on account of constant snowfall, rains, below minus temperature, lack of sufficient life saving drugs and winterized tents have resulted in increasing death rate.
Tamur Mueenuddin, a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) health officer in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, said that despite an earlier vaccination drive there had “been reports about a few cases of measles”.
A number of people who had moved into the camp in Hattian Bala, near Muzaffarabad, after descending from higher mountain villages had missed a vaccination drive launched shortly after the Oct. 8 disaster.
“Now we are having a mop-up immunization campaign for people who were not immunized for some reason,” Mueenuddin said.
Responding to reports that a child with measles had died on Thursday in the camp, he said: “It is not clear that the death was related to measles.”
UN officials have repeatedly warned that the threat of a second wave of deaths from disease and cold among quake survivors in northern Pakistan is becoming more acute every day.
