The South Asia’s earthquake was more devastating than last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami in terms of the number of homeless and destruction to infrastructure, a UN official said today. Hussein Gezairy, who heads the World Health Organization’s Cairo-based regional office that covers Pakistan, said it would be “much, much more difficult” to reach quake victims in the Himalayas than tsunami survivors. “The devastation is much bigger than the tsunami and much bigger definitely than what happened in the US with Katrina hurricane,” Gezairy told reporters in Islamabad. “In the tsunami, 1.5 million people were made homeless, but in this case, we expect more than 2.5 million to be homeless,” he said. “For the 1.5 million people who were homeless, something like 10 billion dollars were mobilised. I do not expect this to be happening in Pakistan. I hope people will give much more,” he said. The death toll was far higher in the tsunami. Some 217,000 people were killed when giant waves battered 11 Indian ocean countries on December 26. Saturday’s earthquake has killed more than 25,000 in Pakistan and 1,300 in India. Gezairy said it would be far more difficult to reach earthquake victims still cut off in the mountains. “The tsunami was all along the coasts, no roads or bridges were destroyed and the damage was a few hundred meters inside,” he said. “During the tsunami, it was possible to have some ships. In this case, only helicopters can reach the disaster areas, but they cannot transport a large number people and equipment. It is much, much more difficult than the tsunami.” Outbreak of measles, malaria and other diseases are likely in quake-devastated areas of Pakistan unless thousands of litres of clean water arrived urgently, the UN’s health body has warned. “Water is especially critical. People need it for basic survival and to reduce the risk of infectious disease. Unsafe water will lead to epidemics,” the World Health Organisation said in a statement. The WHO also called for “a doubling or even tripling” of the number of doctors sent to treat survivors. The situation is “very worrying, given that the thousands of people who are gathered have no shelter and no safe water to drink,” WHO’s regional director Hussein Gezairy said after visiting Mansehra, one of the most devastated regions in the North-West yesterday. UN wants more copters Islamabad: Issuing an urgent appeal for more helicopters to deliver aid to remote quake-hit areas, UN Emergency Relief chief Jan Egeland has said the number of the relief choppers needed to be increased to save thousands of lives. “Next week there will be a big donor conference in Geneva to get funding for the quake-hit region,” Egeland said. PTI
