Aust ups aid for Pakistan by $40m

17 Sep 2010, 7:49 am   -   Source: AAP
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Australia is to provide an additional $40 million in aid for Pakistan, more than doubling funding to assist in flood relief operations.

Australia is to provide an additional $40 million in aid for Pakistan, more than doubling funding to assist in relief operations following the most devastating flooding in a century.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the crisis was already serious, affecting more than 21 million people - more than the combined impacts of the Asian tsunami, 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

He said Pakistan was under great stress.

"This contribution from Australia is based on the advice of AusAID and is designed to assist with the immediate challenges which go to the emerging problem of water-borne diseases as well as other challenges of simple shelter, food and emergency medicine," he told AAP.

Mr Rudd said Pakistan had faced enormous challenges of political stability, threat from the Taliban and now this extraordinary natural disaster.

"Therefore it's incumbent on the international community to assist," he said. "Australia is now the fifth largest contributor to the flood relief appeal. It's important that the other countries of the world also lift their game because this country is a country in need."

The death toll remains mercifully low - less than 2000 - but the flood water progressively inundated Pakistan's most productive farmland, destroying crops and homes, leaving millions in desperate need of food and medical assistance.

Speaking after visiting the 180-member Australian Medical Assistance Team - called AUSMAT - at Kot Adu, in the Punjab, Mr Rudd said the Australia team was treating about 250 people each day, supplementing Pakistan's over-stretched primary medical services.

Rudd said he wished he could say the worst was past but health experts had advised that a second wave of water-borne diseases, including malaria and cholera, were on the way.

Rudd said the mission was set down to run for 90 days.

ll, we'll see because I am the Australian government - when it comes to AusAID," he said.

we'll see what the local needs are because having spoken to folks about the unfolding needs, we might need to be creative about how we take this forward."

The joint Australian Defence Force and AusAID team has set up camp - christened Camp Cockatoo - on a grassed soccer oval, surrounded by a wire fence and guarded by armed Pakistani soldiers.

This area of the Punjab is close to the dangerous tribal territories where the Pakistani military and Islamic insurgents linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda have waged a bitter conflict. Insurgents have already threatened international aid groups.

Those at Camp Cockatoo are conscious of the security situation but the more immediate enemy is the mosquito, breeding prolifically in the waterlogged landscape and already producing initial signs of what could be a malaria epidemic.

Dr Ian Norton, head of the civilian medical side of AUSMAT, said team members were seeing 250 people a day, lots of women and children in particular.

"We are treating very high numbers of malaria and diarrhoeal disease. Malaria rates are actually rising,' he said.

"I have been today to a WHO cluster meeting down at Multan. The whole region is reporting an increasing number of malaria cases."

Dr Norton said despite the scale of the disaster, they were achieving some wins.

A little eight-month old came in a few days ago and had effectively stopped breathing, he said. Grandma had been told by the local hospital to go home, there was nothing more they could do.

"We managed with six hours work here, just simple sugar, water and salt intravenously to resuscitate her. After six hours this little kiddy was awake alert, drinking her own fluids. It was fantastic."

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