Freezing Rain - Outbreaks of Diseases - Pakastani Businessmen, Doctors and the Rotary offering to help Air Mobile!

November 11, 2005 5:24pm (EDT) - Titusville, FL - Air Mobile HQ - Report submitted by Joe Hurston

Air Mobile is ready to return to Pakistan with 50 Vortex Voyagers TM water purifiers. We have an additional 150 ready to send in the next few weeks. We are waiting for funding! Meanwhile, winter is approaching. Rain is causing disease to rapidly spread in the tent-cities and beyond. The pain and suffering of the Pakistani people is terrible! Last week, while in Pakistan, Air Mobile placed 6 Vortex Voyagers TM in critical locations. We know that these units SAVE LIVES!

Today, I was on the phone with a Pakistani businessman and Rotarian Syed Ahmed from Houston, Texas. He has offered to accompany me on the next trip into Pakistan. Thank God! Syed was instrumental in setting up many of our contacts on our Pakistan mission last week. What an incredible job he did. Our primary point of contact in Pakistan was another Rotarian, Shehzad Amed. I cannot begin to describe the excellence that was afforded to us by Shehzad and the Pakistani people. It was Dan Carpenter with World In Need (W.I.N.) that introduced us to Syed! THANKS DAN!

In my conversation with Syed today, I mentioned that we had been in touch with some Pakistani doctors in the Orlando area to raise funds for the 50 Vortex Voyagers TM. He quickly added that the Houston Rotary would MATCH any funds raised by the Orlando Doctors. Our mission is coming together. Words cannot begin to express the joy in my heart that soon we may be returning to Pakistan and bringing with us the incredible capability to produce CLEAN WATER AND SAVE LIVES!

The following news story from today helps explain why we must get CLEAN WATER to the tent-cities and the isolated mountain villages as quickly as possible.

LAHORE, 11 November (IRIN) - Beds reserved for quake victims at the giant Mayo Hospital and other medical centres in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore are quickly filling up once more.

Patients suffering from cholera, diarrhoea and other related ailments, stretch out on beds, intravenous lines feeding them with the liquid and drugs they need to stay alive. Many seem hollow-eyed, badly dehydrated and haunted by this new disease threat.

Some days ago, bed space had begun to open up in Lahore hospitals, as those with trauma injuries from the quake shifted out to camps or to the homes of relatives. Now, the situation is once more grim. At hospitals closest to the disaster-hit areas, in Abbotabad, Murree, Muzaffarabad and elsewhere – from where more and more patients are being sent to Lahore - doctors state "a new crisis has begun".

This time, patients are coming in not with gaping open wounds, gangrene or broken limbs, but with acute diarrhoea, cholera, measles, skin diseases and other infectious illnesses. Many of the worst afflicted are children, with dehydration aggravated by the lack of clean drinking water in many areas.


"The second disaster has started. Cholera and diarrhoea are rampant. These sicknesses will take many lives," said Dr Fayyaz Khan, a volunteer doctor who returned to Lahore from Balakot a day ago to try and find drugs to return with and persuade other volunteers to join depleted staff at field hospitals.

These are the fortunate ones who make it to the hospital! The weather forecast is likewise grim.

More rain forecast for next 2 days in TN
Nov. 11, 2005

Widespread rain is likely to occur over coastal Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry in the next two days with the trough of low pressure persisting today. In the wake of the trough, rain or thundershowers are likely over most places in coastal Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry over the next 48 hours beginning at 8.30 a.m this morning, local weather office said. Isolated heavy to very heavy rain is also likely during the same period.

PLEASE pray with us that funding will come in for these Vortex Voyagers TM. We are ready to return to Pakistan IMMEDIATELY. If you would like to help us with this LIFE SAVING mission, please write me at: joehurston@airmobile.org. Until next report....

Joe Hurston
Air Mobile

PLEASE CONTINUE READING THE STORIES BELOW TO SEE HOW THIS TRAGEDY IS UNFOLDING! Joe