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This week, three new rural health centers will open in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, the first in a network of 20 health care facilities being built under an agreement by AmeriCares and the World Health Organization.The rural health centers are part of AmeriCares ongoing response to the deadly 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck Pakistan on October 8, 2005, killing more than 80,000 people.
Last year’s quake also damaged or destroyed more than 60% of the primary care facilities in these regions. The AmeriCares-World Health Organization initiative is replacing key facilities in critical areas where there is currently no access to primary care. Designed to bring high quality health care services to the earthquake survivors, the rural health centers will each serve a population of between 50,000 to 100,000 people. In total, the network of 20 hospitals will be able to provide services to one million people.
AmeriCares is purchasing the structures, fully equipping each center and supplying each with essential medicines as well as an ambulance. In total, AmeriCares has spent $3.4 million to fund this project.
“The construction of these rural community health centers will allow us to deliver comprehensive primary care services to many people in the affected areas,” says Dr. Khalif Bilé Mohamud, WHO representative in Pakistan.
This latest initiative is just part of AmeriCares comprehensive relief effort to aid the survivors. In October of last year, AmeriCares delivered two airlifts carrying more than $8 million of essential medicines, tents and blankets; in December, AmeriCares delivered and constructed a field hospital that is providing medical care to residents in the isolated Allai Valley. And, in an earlier collaborative effort with the WHO, AmeriCares delivered one million doses of HibTiter® vaccine via airlift to Pakistan in late December.