World Vision staff and partner medical teams have already treated more than 300 children and adults injured in the Pakistan earthquake. They have worked both in the open and in the medical centre that World Vision operated with local partners in Mansehra city even before the disaster struck.
Mansehra sits about 60 kilometres from the epicentre of the quake. Much of the city still stands. However, the district hospital bore the brunt of the earthquake, forcing doctors to abandon the building and move all their patients outside.
With more injured people being brought by army helicopters into the city for treatment, doctors have been racing against the clock to set up more beds.
World Vision's medical centre-which usually treats people with the genetic blood disorder thalesaemia-was quickly turned into an emergency ward. Doctors and surgeons from out-of-town rushed to Mansehra to help. A medical team, led by Dr Shafiq-Ur-Rehman, was creating operating theatres and a plaster room.
Dr Shafiq-Ur-Rehman, who himself travelled from Karachi in the south, said a medical team of 12 had already arrived and another 25 to 30 medical personnel arrived the following day.
He hoped to set up three theaters, one resuscitation room, and a makeshift ICU at World Vision's medical centre.
Five minutes drive away, it is a similar story at Mansehra's Faculty of Science. Classrooms have been turned into primitive wards with patients lying on makeshift beds, on desks, and even outside. General surgeon Dr Zulfiqal Saddique said his doctors have almost nothing in the way of equipment. "We have about 150 beds. We want to expand to 1,000 beds in the next 24 to 36 hours," he said. "But we don't have lights, operating theatres, anesthesia, suctions, or autoclaves for sterilizing instruments."
Two bricks tied together with bandages and slung over the bed was the best the hospital could do for one patient in need of traction on a broken leg. It is just these kind of shortages that World Vision plans to address. World Vision is bringing in a team of doctors this week, and two World Health Organization kits full of essential medical supplies are due into Pakistan on Thursday.
Dr Zulfiqal said one in five patients is a child. "There are a lot of orphans," he added sadly.
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