The Ministry for Foreign Affairs grants million euros to the Finnish Red Cross for deploying a field hospital to Peshawar, Pakistan

Press release 17/2009
22 January, 2009

By the decision made today, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen has granted one million euros to the Finnish Red Cross for deploying a field hospital to Peshawar, Pakistan.

With help of the assistance granted, the healthcare infrastructure will be expanded to cover the strongly increased need due to escalation of combat activity and various kinds of disturbances in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan and in the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the border of Afghanistan. There are approximately 200,000 civilians who have fled from the exchange of fire and pillaging, some tens of thousands of whom are in Afghanistan and the rest on the Pakistani side of the border.

The field hospital treats both combatants and civilians. At a later stage, the hospital equipment will be transferred to the hospital currently under construction in Peshawar that is going to offer surgical services and education in the area on a permanent basis.

In addition to the standard units, the field hospital will include two operating theatres and x-ray and laboratory rooms. With the hospital, the Finnish Red Cross will also deploy both technical and medical personnel.

In 2008, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs financed a similar Finnish Red Cross field hospital project in the cholera-ridden area in Zimbabwe. 

Additional information: Rauli Suikkanen, Counsellor, Unit for Asia and Oceania, tel. +358 9 1605 5523, and Special Adviser to the Minister Ossi Martikainen, tel. +358 40 592 6769