The medical camp – set up thanks to funds raised by the Emergency Coordination Team of the Focolare Movement, AMU and AFN – has carried out consultations in one of the villages affected by the floods. There was a never-ending flow of patients all day long.
In the province of Sindh, Pakistan, huts are built with bamboo roofs. Canes and clay serve to insulate against the extreme heat which can reach 50 degrees Celsius in summer, but these roofs that cannot withstand the rain. The landless workers live in these very poor dwellings, at the mercy of the landlords: when the landlord sends them away they take their bamboo beams and canes with them so that they can reuse them to build new huts elsewhere. They were the ones most affected by the floods six months ago.
“The water came right up to here,” said one of the farmers, “a boy saw it coming, ran into the village and warned us all. We barely had time to flee up the mountain with the elderly people, the many children and our cattle. We were there for a month and a half. During that time three people died from snake bites, becausé everything that could walk or crawl had fled there. Now we are back in our village and we have to start all over again”.
Bringing a first aid medical camp to these villages means being able to distribute medicines and provide treatment that would otherwise be impossible for people living in these areas. And it is precisely to one of these communities – a five-hour drive from the city of Karachi – that one of the medical camps arrived, organised thanks to funds raised by the Emergency Coordination Team of the Focolare Movement, AMU and AFN arrived.
The medical camp stayed for a day and the medical team was housed in a house made up of several rooms: a makeshift studio with just two chairs and a shelf on which to place the medicines. An adjoining room was reserved for the women, where examinations were carried out and some training to prevent further illnesses was also given. As soon as the villagers saw the team arrive, they immediately rushed to be examined.
One of the most common diseases in Pakistan is diabetes and many elderly people have leg ulcers and foot sores, for which they need treatment. The team member Dr Saad, a general practitioner and paediatrician, immediately attended to them. There were also many young patients: malnourished children, with stomach and intestinal problems.
Dr Saad listened patiently to everyone and tried to relieve their suffering. Two nurses distributed medication according to the doctor’s instructions, while Shafaqat (the other nurse in the medical team) tried to explain the dosage of the prescribed medication and how to administer it; certainly not an easy task. Not everyone speaks the national language – Urdu – and Sindhi is a foreign language for people from Karachi.
For the entire day, the flow of patients never stopped. In the evening, the camp was dismantled and the team returned to Karachi, driving along roads that had been left in very poor condition by the floods.
(This article was taken from a report by Jiulia Ritter, of the Focolare Movement in Karachi and Hyderabad, Pakistan)