Camps & Medicines are needed more than anything else, Pakistan Intl. Airlines will carry donations for free.

As you may already know, the disaster that struck Pakistan's Kashmir and NWFP areas has left at least 40,000 dead and 2.5 million homeless (full stats are not in yet, many areas are not accessible at all because of damaged roads due to landslides), there is dire need of clothes, food items, medicines and camping equipment for the survivors.

http://news.google.com.pk/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=earthquake+toll+40%2C000&btnG=Search+News


The winter has arrived and rain and hailstorms have severely hurt the rescue efforts. Please ask your local volunteers to collect as many donations as possible.

Lot of people in Pakistan are collecting donations and lots of cargo trucks, airplanes and helicopters have been dispatched to the affected areas, but the most important items that are short in supply are camps. No more camps are available in and around Lahore, and manufacturers have order for thousands of camps, but they won't be ready for many days.

2.5 million (possibly many more) people are left with no shelter, which means at least half a million camps are required.

The best thing would be to purchase camping equipment and medicines and send them to Pakistan, preferably Islamabad (because Islamabad is the closest big city, 95 km from Muzaffarabad, the epicenter) or Lahore (another 300km from Islamabad) because even with all the monetary aid, camps are not available here at all.

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will carry all relief goods for free from all of its stations in its global network ( http://www.piac.com.pk/press_release/pr293.asp)

Here are the url's of PIA's booking offices around the world alphabetized by cities:

http://www.piac.com.pk/b_offices/A.asp

(New York, Chicago, Houston in USA, Toronto in Canada)

List of PIA's worldwide Stations by Countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_International_Airlines#Services

Links for online Donations: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=38&threadid=1708958&enterthread=y

Please take action as quickly as possible, because the winter is here and the survivors are looking forward to our help. Feel free to contact me for any more information you need.

Thank you.