FPHC Continues in Flood Relief in KPK

Since late July, 2010 more than 10 million children have been affected by the Pakistan floods, including 2.8 million under five-year-olds. 1.2 million people still living in 6300 camps all across the country.

Although progress is being made, many flood-affected families still have limited access to health facilities. In some areas service delivery has been totally disrupted as up to 80% of the homes and facilities were affected. With more than 200 health units destroyed or only partially functional attention has not turned to repairing them.

The majority of private sector health providers have also been disrupted by the floods. Luckily most of Frontier Primary Health Care health units are functional so they have been able to assist in areas where facilities have been destroyed..

Surveillance in the affected flood areas of Pakistan is available on the WHO site. http://www.who.int/hac/crises/pak/en/index.html In the four districts of KPK, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan a total of 80 health facilities were affrected, almost half (38) of them in KPK (Northwest Frontier Province). WHO has 20 health partners assisting in the flood relief in KPK including Frontier Primary Health Care, which is active in both nutrition and health in flood affected areas in Mardan district and a refugee camp.

So far it has proved difficult to track activities of FPHC on the WHO website, which better captures activities of large international organizations likely due to better access to the internet. I could not for example, identify any of their health centers on the WHO maps of KPK health facilitiy status following the flood nor was were they mentioned among partners although the number of medical contacts they have daily exceeds that of many of the other organizations and they were in the field earlier.

However, in early Sept, 14 staff from Frontier Primary Health Care (FPHC) mobile health teams were trained on the WHO Disease Early Warning System so hopefully their activities will be better tracked.

The efforts of FPHC continue in assisting provision of emergency health assistance including high impact, critical life-saving services for men, women and children in communities of flood-affected areas of Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through strengthening, providing and maintaining essential health services.

Photos: FPHC Flood relief 2010