Posted on 12/15/2005 8:13:44 PM PST by paulat
Alive - after 63 days under rubble
December 16, 2005
MOST of her muscles are withered, she cannot speak and she is mentally damaged but doctors believe a Kashmiri women who survived 63 days under freezing rubble after Pakistan's deadly earthquake will live.
Naqsha Bibi, reduced to a skeleton, lies on a hospital bed in the intensive care unit set up by the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association in Muzaffarabad, the capital of quake-ravaged Pakistani Kashmir. Her two brothers and father, injured in the October 8 earthquake, were flown to a hospital in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad where they are under treatment.
"We were injured and were brought to a hospital in Rawalpindi by a helicopter and we had thought all along that our sister is no more," one brother, Jamilur Rehman, said.
Ms Bibi looks a virtual corpse lying on her bed in the field hospital but doctors believe she has every chance of recovering. "She has survived for 63 days under the rubble and it was nothing short of a miracle," said Dr Riaz Ahmed. "We are hopeful she will survive. She is recovering well. She is in a psychological trauma. She sometime smiles at us and she strives to utter a word but she cannot speak. We are watching her," Dr Ahmed said.
Ms Bibi migrated from Kupwara in Indian Kashmir in the early 1990s with thousands of other refugees. She had been living since then in the Kamsar refugee camp, which was destroyed by the earthquake.
Locals said they were digging into the rubble at the camp last Sunday to recover corrugated iron sheets and belongings when they saw a body in a cavity.
"When I pressed a stick into the body I saw slight movement and realised that this person may be alive," said 28-year-old Abdul Qayyum.
The people tried to give her water and food but she could not swallow anything, Mr Qayyum said. On Monday morning a German doctor, Holger Barochmeyer, who was vaccinating people in a nearby village was informed and he immediately advised shifting her to the hospital.
"She was just skin and bones when she was brought here," Mr Ahmed said. "Her jaw was tightly shut and we could not even take her temperature as the thermometer would not stay under the armpit due to wasted muscles."
Another doctor at the field hospital, Hafeezur Rehman, said more than 80 per cent of Ms Bibi's muscles were wasted. "The body is very stiff and there is no flexibility."
After physiotherapy there were signs of improvement and she started taking some liquids. "Now we have started giving her solid meals as well," he said.
Dr Barochmeyer, who works for the private medical group Caritas, said he was very happy to hear the woman was improving and getting full medical treatment. "She must have had access to water and food during the time she was under the rubble, otherwise it was not possible to survive without water and food for such a long time," he said.
Out of the 400 residents of the refugee camps, nearly 200 were killed in the quake which devastated Pakistani Kashmir and some parts of the North West Frontier Province.
It killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir and left an estimated 3.5 million homeless.
Agence France Presse
Terri was deprived of food AND water...makes a HUGE difference. I think CindyDawg was right.
yeah and the lack of a functioning brain stem
Deliverance ping
Teri died from dehydration. I disagree that she lost her will though. She fought as long as she could and longer than more heathier people. JUst talking about it.........:'(
God had His hand on this woman....
Harpseal, lookit this! And you too, texascowboy!
I wish she was here.
What I don't understand is she didn't die from hypothermia!!
Absolutely! What an amazing woman of strength and courage! I hope with the media attention, her days of struggling and suffering will be no more.
I will be praying for her.
It sounds like she was in a pit or hole. The lower temperatures may have helped her with surviving.
In my mind, she will replace that poor Afghani girl on the cover of National Geographic forever.
If she didn't have a functioning brain stem she couldn't have breathed on her own.
FReepmail
No kidding. She is alive for a bigger reason than we know.
Wow, that doesn't even seem possible. Just unbelievable.
More details:
". . . Doctors said that she weighed less than five stone and 80 per cent of her muscles had withered while she was trapped in a tiny space in which she could only crouch.
She had apparently survived on rainwater and rotting food."
I join in prayer for this woman's full recovery!
My gosh .. a miracle she's still alive. Lord, you must've saved her for a reason .. put the right healers in her path for Your good, if it is Your will.
What a miracle story!
harpseal and texascowboy is no longer with us...he's gone to the Master.
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