Shifting from Relief to Recovery

March 21, 2006

Country: Pakistan

Topic: Emergencies

In a remonte mountain region of the North West Frontier Province, Mercy Corps aid workers offload corrugated metal sheets to be used as roofing for winterized shelters. Photo: Mercy Corps/Cassandra Nelson

Mercy Corps aid workers are winding down the agency's extensive shelter-building effort as recovery takes center stage in the mountainside villages in northern Pakistan, where residents struggle to recover from October's 7.6-magnitude earthquake.

Since the disaster, we've distributed critical relief items to nearly 65,000 people, and treated more than 55,000 injuries and ailments at our health clinics. Now our efforts turn toward the region's recovery - repairing bridges, schools, clinics and other buildings and revitalizing communities that have lost everything.

Winter weather is receding. Throughout the coldest months, Mercy Corps employed nearly 9,000 people to salvage materials such as lumber, while teams of agency aid workers disseminated 9-foot-long sheets of corrugated metal to use as roofing material for temporary dwellings. As a result, the last of more than 6,000 shelters are nearing completion.

Mercy Corps teams continue working to ensure families living in large-scale tent camps have clean water and proper sanitation. In one such camp in Kastra, Mercy Corps built latrines and a bathroom, piped water to six new taps and engineered a tank system to hold 8,000 gallons of water.

Although it's been a relatively mild winter, the cold weather has exacerbated health conditions, with acute respiratory illnesses consistently topping the list of ailments reported by patients who visited Mercy Corps health facilities.

Aftershocks continue to shake the region, but winter is abating, having spared all but the highest elevations. Mercy Corps field staff report a mood of "guarded optimism," with the focus shifting to clean-up and rebuilding as the region recovers from a quake that has claimed a confirmed 87,000 lives.

Here's what our 150-person team has done to help survivors:

• Shelter: Mercy Corps is finishing the last of more than 6,000 cold-weather shelters for thousands who faced the prospect a harsh Himalayan winter exposed to the elements. This included a Cash-for-Work program that has employed nearly 9,000 people salvaging materials such as lumber and providing corrugated roofing.

• Medical care: Five health facilities continue to treat quake-related injuries and medical conditions such as respiratory tract infections, intestinal problems and skin rashes. Most are related to exposure or poor sanitation. About 3,000 people a week are treated in these facilities, while another several hundred are visited by mobile medical teams who traveled to high-altitude towns in the Siran Valley. Two thousand health and hygiene kits have been distributed.

• Emergency items: Daily distributions included items to keep families warm in the winter. All told, our teams have distributed more than 3,400 tents, 6,100 stoves, 24,700 heavy blankets, 3,900 quilts and nearly 25,000 lightweight insulating blankets. Eighteen tons of food have been distributed since the earthquake struck.

• Clean water and sanitation: Mercy Corps has built 355 latrines and repaired water systems in 16 villages in Siran and Konsh Valleys. In addition, the agency is helping deliver clean water and safe sanitation for 30,000 people living in tented camps in Muzaffarabad, a city in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

• Schools: In Hillkot, a January 13 celebration of Eid, a Muslim holiday, drew 200 children and 100 adults who reveled in prayers, songs, skits, games and poems. Aid workers are stocking schools there with supplies after furnishing two tented schools in Freedabad Village with mats, thermal blankets, psychosocial materials and school supplies. In all, Mercy Corps has helped about 1,300 children return to school. Earlier, Mercy Corps distributed book bags, text books, coloring books, crayons, and other school supplies to four schools (two primary and two secondary schools) in the hard-hit town of Battal, where classes are being convened in large winterized tents provided by the Pakistani government.

The earthquake was the largest in decades to hit the disputed Himalayan region administered by both Pakistan and India. More than 2,000 seismic aftershocks and bad weather and rough terrain complicated relief efforts across the affected region.

Mercy Corps has a long-term commitment to Pakistan. The agency has worked in Pakistan since 1985, and had 180 staff in the country prior to the earthquake. Its existing humanitarian operations in Baluchistan and Sindh Provinces continue. With spring just around the corner, Mercy Corps plans to shift from relief to longer-term recovery efforts in the northern region of Pakistan.