Vaccination teams in Pakistan warn of shortage of funds

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- A tear rolled down the cheek of 5-year-old Syed Junaid Shah Monday as doctors from UNICEF and the Pakistani Health Ministry vaccinated him against tetanus and measles.\nThe boy is one of the 1.2 million children in Pakistan's quake zone that doctors hope to immunize in the next two to three weeks, but organizers say they have only received about half the $8 million needed for the program.\nWithout the money, "we will not be able to complete the whole activity, which means large numbers of vulnerable children will remain unprotected," UNICEF project manager Edward Hoekstra told The Associated Press.\nSyed also got drops to protect him from polio with an added dose of vitamin A help ward off respiratory illnesses that are easily spread during the coming harsh Himalayan winter.\n"This is important to keep him safe from diseases," said the boy's father, Syed Hussein Shah, seated beside his son on a green flowered mattress in the quake-shattered village of Sawan.\nMoving on to the nearby town of Chinari, the vaccination team set to work on a line of children seated on plastic stools while potato curry simmered in pots nearby. On a normal day, one team can immunize 200 children.\nMore than 86,000 people died in the Oct. 8 quake, and hundreds of thousands are still living in crowded tent camps.\nThe weather was clear and sunny Monday in the regional capital of Muzaffarabad, near the quake's epicenter. Yet snow already has begun falling on mountain villages, where NATO teams are working with the Pakistani army to build wood and metal shelters.\nRelief officials will meet in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, starting Friday to discuss long-term reconstruction, expected to cost about $5.2 billion. The United Nations says it needs $550 million in emergency aid, but donors have pledged only $131 million.\nU.N. officials in Pakistan said in late October that they might have to ground U.N. helicopter relief flights for lack of funding. However, a spokeswoman in Geneva said Monday the United Nations has enough money to keep its helicopters flying -- at least for now.\nElisabeth Byrs, the spokeswoman at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the United Nations only warned last week that it might have to reduce the hours its helicopters were flying if it did not receive sufficient funding. It costs the U.N. about $1,000 an hour to hire a cargo helicopter, she said.\nByrs said the U.N. has not had to cut back "as the funds are flowing in, albeit at a slow pace."\nPresident Gen. Pervez Musharraf, meanwhile, met with a delegation of American business leaders and the top State Department official for public diplomacy, Karen Hughes. He thanked them for U.S. assistance, particularly the dispatch of two dozen helicopters.\n"I don't think anyone else could have managed what the U.S. helicopter teams have managed," Musharraf said.\nMembers of the group, which aims to boost U.S. private and corporate giving for the quake, included Hank McKinnell, chairman and CEO of drug maker Pfizer Inc., Xerox Chairman Anne Mulcahy, and former United Parcel Service Inc. Chairman Jim Kelly.\nVisiting a U.S. Army MASH field hospital in Muzaffarabad, Hughes said U.S. support was "here to stay." An additional 180 American doctors will come to Pakistan this week to help out, she said.\nAlso Monday, India and Pakistan briefly opened a fourth point along the heavily militarized frontier in divided Kashmir to exchange aid materials. Both sides claim Kashmir in its entirety and the sides have fought two wars over the region since 1947.