No end to the pain at makeshift Pak hospital

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Thursday (AFP) - In a tiny makeshift clinic set up in a stadium, earthquake survivors scream with pain and silent children pass for dead, but either way the flow of wounded never stops.

There are never enough doctors to care for the grim parade of patients. Medical workers treat the survivors frantically, on the ground or two to a table, with few supplies at hand after Pakistan's worst disaster on record.

Many survivors have lost their entire families and arrive expressionless after the shock of Saturday's tragedy that has claimed at least 23,000 lives.

Every five minutes a patient comes in or out of the crammed emergency room of Neelum Stadium, where under a stench of iodine the injured lie on cloth stretchers or on dirty and drenched coverings spread on the ground. The anesthesia available is rarely strong enough.

Sumera, 13, cries out as a doctor dresses her foot injury. Next to her another young girl wrenches her hand into the air when a surgical knife touches the gaping wound on her head. On the ground a young woman shrieks in agony as she is treated for a fractured bone.

Military and civilian doctors run around, worn out, some unshaven, and many going without food or water during the day for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

"We're simply swamped. There's enough medicine for basic treatment but not enough supplies or doctors," says medical surgeon Sohail Muzammil.