Surgeon fears more quake deaths

Mr Sheriff said earthquake victims were suffering from poor hygiene

A Kent surgeon who led a team of doctors helping victims of the South Asia earthquake has said a bad winter could cause thousands more casualties.

Matin Sheriff, a consultant at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, is preparing to return to the region one year on from the disaster.

He said the current problem was a lack of clean water and sanitation.

"There is a real danger that as many lives could be lost this winter as there were from the earthquake."

Up to 100,000 people are still without proper shelter following the earthquake which hit Pakistan and northern India. Sunday is the first anniversary of the disaster.

'Poor hygiene'

"It was as if the earth had woken and engulfed whole communities. The devastation's enormous," he said.

Dr Sheriff is aiming to continue his work with field hospitals and shelter programmes.

"Unless you have proper shelter you will die," he said.

"Cholera and dysentery is actually killing a lot of very young and the elderly who are clearly feeble or infirm because of poor hygiene essentially."

'Monsoon mudslides'

Meanwhile an aid worker from Kent has returned to the UK after spending six months helping to restore running water to a remote valley in Kashmir.

Chris Moss, from Maidstone, said he was part of an 80-strong team working for medical relief charity Merlin which faced a "mammoth task" when he arrived in the area in May.

"Close to 100% of the infrastructure in the valley had been destroyed by the earthquake. What remained was a muddy mass of broken buildings.

"The terrain continued to be treacherous. The region had one ravine-flanked road which was blocked by monsoon mudslides."