Disasters: meanwhile, in Pakistan …
October 22nd, 2005 by Bill
In this year of compounding natural disasters (and a few man-made), the one that worries me most is the Pakistan-India earthquake … for a number of reasons, including things like this: Babies dying of cold, says doctor in quake zone.
With calamities closer to home, my sense is that this one gets lost even though this is the one that may be the most horrific given the difficulties of reaching people, the weather (meaning, winter) and the kind of “disaster numbness” most of us must be feeling by now. (”What? You mean another one?”)
In other words, while disasters shouldn’t be reduced to a numbers game, this one strikes me as one where whatever the number of victims now (something like 79,000, I think), there is no cessation to their growth because this one is ongoing. The quake may be over but its impact continues and grows (for reasons of geography, climate, economic conditions etc.).
Anyway … what I gather from the news reports I’ve seen, relief resources (like money) are way behind what they need to be. And I see on the main World Vision site, “With harsh winter weather coming, 2.5 million homeless need help now.”
You can donate money here. (For World Vision Canada, donate here.)
Or you could go the American Red Cross site and donate here. (They provide a grocery list of disasters to choose from - scarey stuff.) And there’s the Canadian Red Cross here.
Here’s a notion … How about a major movie studio saying, “We were going to sink millions into another moronic comic book movie with explosions and celebrities in tights but decided instead to send that money to Pakistan as part of the relief effort.”
Just a thought.
(Photo: An eight-month-old baby at a field hospital in Ghanool, Pakistan, receives treatment for the first time for burns to his face suffered in the Oct. 8 earthquake, Friday, Oct. 21.) (AP Photo/Tomas Munita)
Tag: Pakistan, Relief, Aid, World Vision, Red Cross, Earthquake
