PAKISTAN: NGOs and government respond to massive tsunami needs

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ISLAMABAD, 31 Dec 2004 (IRIN) - A 12-member medical team form Pakistan's largest charity, the Edhi Foundation, left on Friday for Sri Lanka with more than five mt of life-saving and other emergency medicines, responding to an appeal from the Sri Lankan government for help in dealing with victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami tragedy that struck the region on 26 December. The huge tidal waves killed at least 140,000 people and made five million homeless in nations bordering the Indian Ocean and further afield.

"Other than this consignment, the team is also carrying cash to purchase medicines directly from there. Then, as we've not any direct flight from Pakistan for Indonesia the team will move from Sri Lanka to the worst-hit province of Indonesia, Aceh," Anwar Kazmi, a spokesman of the Edhi Foundation, told IRIN from the southern port city of Karachi.

Sri Lanka has lost at least 28,000 people, while about five million people have been reported displaced by the tsunami disaster. The charity sent its first consignment of some 100,000 metres coffin cloth on Monday, following the Sri Lankan government's appeal. "The second consignment is being sent today, while the third one will be despatched the day after tomorrow," Kazmi said.

"At the moment we are concentrating on the areas worst hit by the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The Sri Lankan government approached us for the provision of medicines. So we are sending the life-saving drugs and also the dry milk for children," Kazmi added.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani government on Thursday sent 12 mt of relief goods to the Maldives for people affected by the tidal wave there. The items were sent by C-130 transport aircraft and included tents, blankets, medicines and food items.

"We have got the lists of needed items from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and also from Thailand. The resources have been allocated for the arrangement of relief goods, mainly the medicines - that will be despatched as and when we are ready," a spokesman for the Pakistani foreign office, Masood Khan, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. "Pakistani embassies and resident missions in all the tsunami-hit regions are monitoring the situation, so we'll respond as we get any request from their side," Khan said.

An Indonesian embassy official, Budy Prihantoro, told IRIN in Islamabad, that several private organisations in Pakistan had donated cash as well as relief items for the Indonesian people. "While many have offered to send medical teams as well," Prihantoro maintained.

The Edhi Foundation official said they had received a request from the Pakistani embassy in Thailand for the provision of coffin cloth, medical supplies, blankets, tents, clothes, dried and canned food and rice and several other basic goods. "We are looking for options to send foodstuff - it is a bit difficult from here, but we are processing other things," Kazmi said.

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