Tetanus kills 5 as Pak quake wounds fester

Pakistani and international aid workers have launched a massive campaign to vaccinate millions of people who survived the disaster but whose wounds could become infected, it said.

"Five deaths from tetanus have been reported" among people who were evacuated from devastated northern Pakistan and Kashmir to hospitals in the capital Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi, health secretary Anwar Mahmood said.

"We are treating another 42 tetanus cases and they might increase. People who have been recovered late are developing it," added Mahmood.

In the ruined northern city of Balakot, battalion commander Colonel Saeed Iqbal said the World Heath Organisation had informed him of "cases of diarrhoea and a few cases of tetanus".