It was Oct 10, 2005 — two days after the earthquake struck — when I reached Manshera with the relief team of the Pakistan Medical Association.
Our first stop was the Kid’s Blood Disease Organisation (KBDO) hospital at Shahnawaz Chowk in Mansehra. There were anaesthetists, gynaecologists, orthopaedic surgeons, general surgeons, physicians and voluntary medical students in our team. Landing at the Islamabad airport, we took a wagon to reach Mansehra, along with the volunteers of the Taraqi Foundation.
It was a long journey; we had already heard that a big building had collapsed in Islamabad but between Abbottabad and Mansehra we saw many damaged buildings — some of which were totally destroyed.
At that time there was very little traffic and nobody knew the actual extent of destruction caused by the earthquake. We saw distressed and tense faces everywhere and witnessed panic whenever there was an aftershock, which is a normal phenomenon after an earthquake of this magnitude.
In Mansehra, we came to know that the road to Muzaffarabad was closed and that Pakistan Army was working to open the main road.
We also came to know that Balakot had been totally destroyed. We met people from Abbotabad who told us that injured people were flooding the medical college hospital which was not able to cope with the number of patients.