UNICEF along with others is now working to provide clean water, sanitation, food, shelter and adequate health care for the growing numbers of people struggling down from the mountains needing assistance. As winter approaches, poor hygiene conditions and the possible outbreak of disease are threatening the lives of tens of thousands quake survivors in Pakistan’s relief camps. To protect children UNICEF has launched a massive immunization campaign before snow starts falling and cuts off the remote mountainous regions. Working along side Pakistan’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization, UNICEF has sent out 600 teams all over the affected region, immunizing children against measles, polio, diphtheria and tetanus. Nearly 60,000 children are vaccinated each day.

As word of the immunization programme spreads, through local radio stations, people crowd around the teams as soon as they arrive at the camps. It is estimated that before the earthquake only 60 per cent of the region’s children were reached by routine immunization. As of the end of the tenth day of UNICEF’s campaign, some half a million children have been protected.

This earthquake was unavoidable but no one wants to see it become a bigger catastrophe for children.