Floods: Red Cross staff meet for update on relief work

KARACHI:

Relief operations for the 2011 monsoon rains are winding down and will be completed by the end of January, said the Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) provincial secretary Kanwar Waseem.

Representatives from the Danish, German, Swiss, Norwegian Red Cross along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) had a monthly meeting on Wednesday.

The meetings have become a routine feature for the organisations since November 2010. According to Waseem, health operations and activities organised by the PRCS will continue till the end of March. This includes setting up 12 mobile health care units in Mirpurkhas, Qambar Shahadkot, Thatta and Badin. Meanwhile, the ICRC has completed several projects in Jacobabad. Renovation of a basic healthcare unit in Muhammad Pur and the water supply scheme in Hussain Bux Chachar have been completed.

According to the head for the ICRC in Sindh, they were working on a taluka hospital in Garhi Khairo which was inundated after the 2010 floods. He added that the ICRC did not actively participate in relief work for the 2011 floods but provided food and non-food assistance, including tents and medicals kits, through PRCS for 15,000 families.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2012.