A hospital in Pakistan being built with the help of cash from a Telegraph & Argus appeal is expected to start treating patients in six months.

More than 87,000 people lost their lives and hospitals were wiped out when a devastating earthquake struck close to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-governed Azad Kashmir, in 2005.

The T&A teamed up with the Lord Mayor of Bradford’s Kashmir Earthquake Appeal Trust to build a hospital in the region.

Meanwhile a group of doctors in the Midlands, who helped the victims after the disaster, set up the Midland Doctors Association UK (MDAUK), also to build a hospital.

The appeals were combined with T&A readers donating £81,707.52. A ward at the hospital, expected to be completed by the end of 2011, will be named after the Telegraph & Argus.

MDAUK has also been supporting those left destitute by ravaging floods in Pakistan earlier this year.

Chairman of MDAUK Syed Iftikhar said: “It has been a lot of work. We have constructed a village near Peshawar and we have provided medical supplies and food supplies worth about £200,000. But we haven’t lost focus from the main project – the hospital project.”

The construction is built to withstand earthquakes reaching a magnitude of nine, with hundreds of tonnes of steel and concrete foundations going eight feet deep.

“We hope to finish the front portion and start seeing outpatients in June,” said Dr Iftikhar.

“The back portion, containing theatres and labs, that will take a bit longer, but we hope everything will be done by next year.

“The community there are all involved in it, it has provided them work, it has provided them resources, and when the hospital is built it will bring shops, and more for the local community.

“And most importantly they will get free healthcare and the infrastructure for long-term healthcare.”