A WOMAN from the North-East is heading to Pakistan today to help set up two field hospitals for victims of the earthquake.

Paula Sansom will spend three months working as Pakistan's health director for medical charity Merlin.

She will face sub-zero temperatures and will live in a tent as she helps co-ordinate a project to set up GP-style clinics that will help victims as winter approaches.

Miss Sansom said charity representatives already in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir had walked for two days to reach victims in the Panj Kot and Neelam regions of the country, as roads had become impassable following aftershocks and landslides.

"The area has a population of 160,000 but there are no buildings left standing," she said. "It is estimated that about 2,000 have died and 10,000 are injured in the area.

"Some have said this earthquake was worse than the tsunami - there are people who still haven't been found and others stuck on ridges in mountains and it's starting to snow," she said.

Miss Sansom, 38, a trained nurse, joined Merlin in 2001.

She said the main health issues in the region would be exposure and respiratory problems such as pneumonia. Victims also need shelter and food, but they do have a water supply from the mountains.

Miss Sansom has worked in Africa, Gaza, Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan, Nepal and Indian Kashmir and, when not abroad, lives with her father, Rodger, in Middleton St George, near Darlington.

For more information about Merlin's work, visit www.merlin.org.uk