NOWSHERA: When water gushed through Nowshera hospital last month it filled operating rooms and wards, left them clogged with stinking mud and forced patients to leave, whatever their condition.

Two doctors evacuating the sick had to be airlifted to safety after getting trapped on the top floor of the district hospital, the main source of health care for 1.6 million people in Pakistan’’s impoverished northwest.

“Eighty percent of the hospital staff were affected themselves. The water had destroyed their homes, cars and everything. No one was able to come to hospital,” said the hospital’’s chief doctor, Muhammad Arshad.

But since the ruin, caused by monsoon-triggered floods, which swept across the country, a massive volunteer undertaking has allowed the hospital to reopen, and Arshad now sits smiling on donated furniture in his freshly whitewashed office.

The walls that were blackened and buried in mud for a week are now a hygienic white, there are working heart-monitor, X-ray, ultrasound and anesthaesia machines, and the damaged water pipe has been replaced.

“When we arrived to rehabilitate the hospital we had no idea where to start, because every corner of the hospital needed immediate attention,” said Arif Mehmood Siddiqui, the administrative head of Pakistan’’s National University of Science and Technology, who coordinated the volunteer effort.

“What we had was mud and a stinking smell. There was not even a bench to sit on to run a clinic,” he says.

Young doctors from Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, arrived with doctors from international aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres, army engineers and university staff, to roll up their shirt sleeves and save the hospital.

Now, after hard work and donations, the hospital has new mattresses and pillows for all 114 beds, there are new delivery tables for the labour ward and the operating theatres are fully functioning.

“We have rediscovered this hospital from the rubble,” Siddiqui said.

Once the hospital itself had been saved, however, there were hundreds of flood victims waiting for help — meaning extra doctors were quickly needed.

“We ran this hospital for two weeks because the doctors normally on duty were affected themselves. There was a dire need for doctors and medicine and we successfully managed it,” said Rawalpindi doctor Nasir Habib.

The World Health Organization estimates that 4.4 million flood victims have received medical treatment since the floods began in late July, but that number only accounts for those who visited health centres that reported their figures.

Before the floods, this district hospital, situated close to Pakistan’’s militant-riddled tribal areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, handled up to 400 patients each day, but Arshad says nearly 700 now come daily.

Many of them are suffering from water-borne gastric diseases caused by the month-long floods, which threaten to cause a second wave of death among the 18 million affected nationwide.

“Everything is under control, we are ready to fight diarrhoea and can deal with the patient load,” said doctor Fayaz Ahmed, who runs a clinic to counter the diarrhoea epidemic.

For Nabila, whose two-month-old daughter was struck with the illness, the work of the volunteers has saved her family.

“These doctors have given new life to my daughter. I am so thankful to this hospital which has saved my baby from death,” Nabila said.

For Shumaila Khatun, a 29-year-old woman who is due to give birth next month, the reopening of the hospital has brought much-needed relief.

“I am really relieved. Now I can give birth to my baby without worry,” she said.

Sept 03, Colombo: The second court martial probing charges against Sri Lanka’s former Army Commander and current DNA parliamentarian General (Retired) Sarath Fonseka will resume its sittings today.

JEDDAH: The Organisation of the Islamic Conference on Thursday appealed to Muslims everywhere to direct their zakat tithes to relief for flood-wracked Pakistan.

The Jeddah-based pan-Islamic organisation, together with the OIC-sponsored International Islamic Fiqh Academy, said in a statement that Muslims everywhere “should not restrain from helping their Pakistani brothers … and should not leave them alone to their fate.”

The Fiqh academy, a centre of research on Islamic jurisprudence, said that Islamic scholars had ruled that it is acceptable to direct one’’s tithes to other communities and countries than one’’s own.

Islam requires believers to donate 2.5 percent of their income annually to share with others within their community, usually the less privileged.

“The scholars also approved the Muslim’’s choice to pay zakat to those who are more in need of zakat money than the people of the country of origin, such as people affected by different disasters, including floods and earthquakes,” the statement said.

The lives of some 18 million people in Pakistan were affected by the massive flooding along the Indus river beginning in August.

Some eight million are completely dependent on handouts to survive, and Pakistan has said the hundreds of millions of dollars already pledged in aid would not be enough.

Sept 03, Colombo: Sri Lanka’s Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) affiliated National Trade Union Center (NTUC) has commenced discussions with other trade unions and union representatives to jointly fight for winning salary increments for the working masses.

Sept 03, Colombo: Sri Lanka’s Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremasinghe has left for India on a two-day official tour.

Sept 03, Mullikulam: Sri Lankan military plans to establish military bases in strategically significant places to strengthen the national security further, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said Thursday.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani has stressed the need to continue the relief efforts with the same zeal and zest as exhibited during last weeks till the flood-affected people return to their homes.

The Prime Minister was talking to the Federal Ministers who met him at the Prime Minister House on Thursday to brief him about the rescue and relief operations in different areas as well as damage caused to various kind of infrastructure.

The Prime Minister stressed upon the Ministers to devise means for early restoration of civic amenities and services so that the recovery and reconstruction operations could be launched without any waste of time.

He said that restoration of public utilities will help in mitigating the sufferings of the flood affected people to a great extent.

The Prime Minister urged the Ministers to update the assessment of damages in collaboration with the provincial governments so that assistance could reach to the genuine affected people in time.

He further said that the government had succeeded to create awareness among the Pakistani public and the world community to contribute generously towards the Flood Relief Fund.

The meeting was attended by the Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Nazar Muhammad Gondal, the Federal Minister for Water Power, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, The Federal Minister for Information Broadcasting, Qamar Zaman Kaira, the Federal Minister for Labour Manpower, Syed Khurshid Shah and Advisor to the Prime Minister, Senator Raza Rabbani.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has issued official approval of four-day Eid holidays, which will fall from September 10 to 13, Geo News reported.

In his pre-Eid message, the Premier hoped the nation to remember in its Eid?s celebrations the ill-fated flood-hit Internally Displace Persons (IDPs).

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Chief Altaf Hussain Thursday asserted that a public revolution has become fate of Pakistan and now nothing can stop a ?French revolution-like change in the country?.

Addressing via telephone a launching ceremony of book ?Meray Quaid? by MQM?s Deputy Convener Anis Ahmed Qaimkhani here at Khursheed Begum Memorial Hall, Azizabad, Altaf Hussain invited ?notables, armed forces, Establishment and bureaucracy? to come forward and begin lending their support to the people.

Journalists, scholars, members of national and provincial assemblies besides workers and office bearers of MQM attended the ceremony.

?In the prevailing situation of the country, which has also been hit by worst floods, the poor has nothing to eat nor anything to wear, forcing people to sell out their children,? Altaf Hussain noted.

GENEVA: Growing resentment among Pakistan flood victims on the pace of aid delivery is hampering the relief effort, the international Red Cross warned Thursday, saying it had to halt two distributions recently due to unrest.

“What we are detecting is a very worrying trend of areas where … people are so in need, so resentful of not getting enough aid, that they turn understandably aggressive and this is bad because it doesn”t help in our efforts to reach more of them,” said Jacques de Maio, the head of operations for South Asia for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He pointed out that in two instances in the past eight days, officials had to stop distribution of relief items “because of unrest.”

“We are worried because if this trend extends, propagates,” it could hinder the aid effort, he noted.

De Maio noted that the trend is particularly worrying because, unlike other disasters such as an earthquake, the floods are generating more and more victims as the high waters sweep into new regions.

“The thing is that due to the sheer magnitude of this and the fact that we are not in for a sprint, we”re here for a marathon, we need to make sure that (such unrest) does not become the rule rather than the exception,” he said.

De Maio also pointed out that certain elements were also not helping by agitating the crowd.

“If you organise a distribution for 30,000 and in the last 48 hours you have an additional 150,000, then you have a problem, particularly if you have people in the crowd, behind the crowd saying that ”anyway they”re useless, anyway they are politicised”,” he said.

“By doing so, the choice is the usual dilemma, are we ready to have our friends, our staff being killed and looted there? Because instead of helping 150,000 people we can only help 30,000?”

“Our angle is that we want first to help this 30,000 and see how we can extend what we do,” said de Maio.

The unprecedented floods have engulfed an area the size of England, affecting more than 18 million people, including eight million who are dependent on aid handouts to survive.

The scale of the disaster is so large that a month after the deluge, many are complaining of going without food or water for days.

The ICRC, which has already reached hundreds of thousands of flood victims, expects to reach around 1.4 million people within the next six weeks.