Region supports quake fundraising

The quake death toll stands at more than 50,000

People and organisations from the South East are continuing their fundraising for the South Asia earthquake victims, nearly two weeks after the disaster.

The Sussex Muslim Society Trust has seen more than £100,000 contributed.

A 25-strong team of medical and support staff is leaving for the affected area on Saturday, headed by two surgeons from a Kent hospital.

And Surrey students have joined forces to raise as much as £2,000 for various charities working on the relief effort.

The University of Surrey Students' Union, in Guildford, said three societies had been conducting fundraising campaigns around campus and at nightclubs in the town.

The Asian Society has been collecting for the Red Cross, while the Pakistan Students' Association is contributing to the President's Earthquake Relief Fund, run by the Pakistani government.

There is a race against time because of the forthcoming winter Dr Matin Sheriff, Medway Maritime Hospital

The university's Islamic Society organised a sponsored fast where all students and staff, not just Muslims already observing Ramadan, were encouraged to give up food and drink during daylight hours on Wednesday.

Dr Idrees Awan, a surgeon with the Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust in Surrey, is working alongside Woking businessman Sajid Mahmood.

They are both supporters of the Hashim Welfare Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, which has set up a temporary medical base in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Mr Mahmood is helping to co-ordinate the camp's work, which he said mainly involved "day-to-day medicine" for affected people.

Aid trips

A quarter of the £100,000 raised by the Sussex Muslim Society Trust was achieved in just one day.

Imam Sajid said his nephew in the Pakistani capital Islamabad was providing valuable information towards fact-finding missions the society was carrying out in the earthquake area.

Dr Sheriff's project has £700,000 funding from the DEC

A separate aid trip is being led by Dr Matin Sheriff, a consultant urological surgeon for five years at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent.

"I'm going out on Saturday as the medical co-ordinator for a team setting up a field hospital about 300km north-east of Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir," said Dr Sheriff.

"The aim is to set up in an area which remains inaccessible to the relief effort, get to those places and people and provide immediate medical relief."

Mr Sheriff said there would be mobile units for people who could not get to the field hospital, and added that the main camp would remain in place throughout the coming months.

"There is a race against time because of the forthcoming winter," he said.

"The effort now has to be on preventing further deaths as a consequence of the natural elements."