Profile of injuries arising from the 2005 Kashmir Earthquake: The first 72 h

An earthquake that registered 7.8 on the Richter scale devastated the regions of Northern Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Northern India at 8:50 a.m. on October 8, 2005. In excess of 86,000 people were killed and over 80,000 severely injured. The widespread effect of the quake destroyed countless cities and villages (Fig. 1a—c), and many hospitals were completely destroyed. In the rural town of Forward Kahuta (FK), Kashmir, a small Pakistani military hospital (Mobile Surgical Team (MST)) was one of the only hospitals to remain standing in the Bagh District.
With no communication or retrieval service available during the first 3 days, the MST received its first patient within minutes of the quake and treated a large number of casualties over the ensuing weeks. The aim of this paper is to document the injury patterns, subsequent treatment and infection risk that occurred following the earthquake. Furthermore, we aim to formulate recommendations to improve future disaster relief in isolated, rural regions of developing countries.