Straws will be a lifeline for flood victims
0 Comments | Nottingham Evening Post, Sep 1, 2010 | by Claire Carter
THOUSANDS of straws that will enable families in Pakistan to drink clean, safe water for months are due to arrive in the country tomorrow.
Midlands Doctors’ Association, (MDAUK) which includes Nottingham GP Safiy Karim and Dr Asrar Rashid, consultant paediatrician at the QMC, has ordered 2,500 LifeStraws to be sent to parts of Pakistan devastated by recent floods.
The rain has left thousands of people homeless and without food or shelter, living in tents full of mud.
The LifeStraws have a special filter inside them which gets rid of bacteria in the water so it can be drunk safely. This prevents the spread of diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, and cholera.
The charity has ordered family-size LifeStraws which should last a family between three and four months.
Not only is MDAUK one of the first charities to get the LifeStraws out to Pakistan, it is believed to be the first charity to translate the instructions into Urdu and Pushto so they can be used by local people.
“The biggest problem is the spread of disease,” said Dr Rashid. “The most important aspect of these straws is providing the ability to quench the thirst of children and families, protecting them from the epidemic of infection and disease.”
The straws were sourced from Vietnam and are being delivered to Sindh which is one of the areas worst affected by the floods since the waters spread south.
“If we can get people through this initial phase then we can start looking at water access,” added Dr Rashid.
“Then we need to look at digging wells.
“The water has gone south now and that’s where the issue really is, that’s where the straws will be utilised at this point. But we would like to get more.”
The family-sized LifeStraws usually cost about Pounds 25 each but MDAUK managed to get the 2,500 for Pounds 5,000 from Life Box, which produces them.
MDAUK is a small charity made up of doctors and volunteers that has enlisted the help of local people in Pakistan so they can get to some of the places worst hit and isolated by the floods.
The charity has also been collecting food to be sent out to Pakistan and has been supported locally. On Monday volunteers helped pack bags of food with Dr Rashid and his wife at their home in Dunkirk, to be sent out to Pakistan.
The charity has also had a recent boost with a donation of $100,000 from the Bank of America Merril Lynch.
Dr Rashid said 70% of this money would be used for the flood relief effort and 30% for MDAUK’s project to build a permanent hospital.
MDAUK was initially formed in 2005 after doctors decided a hospital needed to be set up in the wake of the Pakistan earthquake.
But after the floods hit the charity decided it needed to postpone the hospital project and use the skills of its doctors and volunteers to offer immediate help.
Dr Rashid added: “We’ve got through the initial phase of access to people and treatment of illness and hunger. We are treating life- threatening illnesses.
“The next thing we are doing is where we’ve been operating, looking at projects in the medium term like structural problems
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