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Courtesy of Zeba Vanek

A hut in Kandol doubled as a clinic where 200-plus were treated.

Winter Survivors

By Jack Feuer
Today Staff writer

In late November, while Americans prepared to give thanks, UCLA neurologist Zeba Vanek and her L.A.-based Pakistani friends were raising almost $100,000 to buy sleeping bags and medicine to help survivors of the devastating Oct. 8 earthquake that struck Northern Pakistan live through the ferocious Himalayan winter.

Donations poured in from the campus and elsewhere, but Vanek, director of the UCLA Spasticity Clinic, could not stop there. In early December, she returned to her native land and struggled to reach all-but-inaccessible mountainous regions where millions, forgotten by the rest of the world, face death.

“Two million children … are freezing in sub-zero temperatures in the valleys and slopes of the highest and coldest mountains of the world,” she wrote last month in an e-mail about her three-week mission of mercy. “Many [are] starving and with little or no food, winterized shelters or medical help.”

On their own, Vanek, New Jersey neurologist Sofia Janjua and Susan Escueta of the Epilepsy Foundation in Los Angeles traveled to northern Pakistan where they teamed up with doctors and volunteers from HOAP International, an NGO that helped with transportation, lodging and logistical support.

They reached one of their first stops, a mountain village called Kandol, at dawn by helicopter — the only way in or out ever since the only road, a dirt track, was destroyed in the quake.

“The deep, clear blue sky, the white snow contrasting with the dark brown of the mountains and gushing pearl-white streams of water flowing down below were heavenly,” she wrote. “The air was crisp and clean, and we could see many small homes on the slopes of the hills all around us.”

The villagers’ only food, besides what the team brought them, consisted of a few scattered stacks of dried corn. There was no electricity or running water. A villager, the “dispenser,” helped the team set up medical camps in huts. By evening, the doctors had seen more than 200 patients, all badly malnourished. “The spectrum of ailments were what we had been told to expect,” Vanek recalled, “worms, diarrhea, respiratory tract and ear infections and a variety of obstetrical and gynecological issues, and a lot of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Courtesy of Zeba Vanek

With little food for the winter, villagers are malnourished, doctors said.

By evening, we had finished all the medications that we had brought with us, and still many more patients needed to be seen.”

All too soon the chopper returned to take the team to its next destination. “I saw tears in the eyes of the dispenser,” said Vanek, “his last words being, ‘Do not forget us.’ ”
During their trip, Vanek and her team evaluated numerous spinal cord injury patients. The majority were young women, who were trapped in their homes when roofs fell in and broke their backs, leaving them paraplegics.

Knowing it will be months before winter releases its grip, Vanek has this message for those of us who live under a far more forgiving sun: “Dear friends, please help spread the word so that more people, perhaps even compassionate governments, come forward to join this effort in whatever capacity they can. We need to save as many innocent lives as we can before many more perish quietly in the mountains.”

Details on how to help are at www.saquake.org and www.hoap.org.pk. Medical professionals interested in serving at a medical relief camp may contact Vanek at (310) 234-0463 or zvanek@mednet.ucla.edu.