Pakistan to send medical teams to aid quake-hit Afghans: sources

ISLAMABAD: The caretaker government on Monday decided to send a medical team from Pakistan to provide relief to the victims of the earthquake in Afghanistan, ARY News reported, citing sources.

Sources within the Ministry of Health claimed that a 10-member special medical team will soon leave for Afghanistan to aid the citizens injured in the earthquake.

According to the reports, a medical team from Islamabad will leave for Afghanistan in the first phase, while in the second phase, the medical team from Peshawar and Quetta will travel to Afghanistan to give medical assistance to the injured citizens.

Sources suggested that the special medical team traveling to Afghanistan will be headed by the neurosurgeon Dr. Faiz Achakzai from Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences – PIMS Hospital, Islamabad.

Meanwhile, the 10-member medical team consists of five nurses and five doctors from the department of Neurosurgery, General Surgery, and Bone and Joint specialists.

Sources close to the development stated that a cargo of medicines will also be sent to Afghanistan along with the medical team, however, the arrangement of medicines for quake-hit Afghan citizens is done by the Federal hospitals.

It is pertinent to mention here that, more than 2,400 people were killed in earthquakes in Afghanistan, the Taliban administration said on Sunday, in the deadliest tremors to rock the quake-prone mountainous country in years.

The Saturday quakes in the west of the country hit 35 km (20 miles) northwest of the city of Herat, with one of 6.3 magnitude, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

They were among the world’s deadliest quakes this year, after tremors in Turkey and Syria killed an estimated 50,000 in February.

Janan Sayeeq, spokesman for the Ministry of Disasters, said in a message to Reuters that the toll had risen to 2,445 dead, but he revised down the number of injured to “more than 2,000”. Earlier, he had said that 9,240 people had been injured.

Sayeeq also said 1,320 houses had been damaged or destroyed. The death toll spiked from 500 reported earlier on Sunday by the Red Crescent.

Ten rescue teams were in the area, which borders Iran, Sayeeq told a press conference.