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Earthquake in Pakistan and Kashmir: suggested plan for psychological trauma relief work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

M. Akmal Makhdum  and
Afzal Javed
M. Akmal Makhdum
Affiliation:
103A Valley Road, Ipswich IP1 4PE, Suffolk, UK, email akmal.makhdum@smhp.nhs.uk
Afzal Javed
Affiliation:
Medical Centre, Manor Court Avenue, Nuneaton CV11 5HX, UK, email afzal.javed@ntlworld.com
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On the morning of 8 October 2005, Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir were hit by an earthquake that measured 7.6 on the Richter scale. Within 5 seconds, almost all buildings in two major cities of the north were destroyed: the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, and Balakot, a picturesque mountain city. This was about 9 a.m. Children were in classrooms and mothers were doing household chores. Many men were in the fields. Therefore, when houses and buildings collapsed, thousands of young children and women were killed, as a result of falling roofs and walls. All government buildings, universities and colleges were destroyed and thousands of students died. In one town there were no children left alive: a generation had been wiped out. In two schools alone people were trying to retrieve 600 bodies of young girls. The earthquake hit hardest in difficult mountainous terrain. Even under normal conditions, four-wheel-drive vehicles are required to travel in this area; after the earthquake, landslides had blocked access to large villages. Many small villages were buried.

Type
Special papers
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 16 - 18
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2006

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