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
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Lord, heal this stout-hearted woman.
From your lips to God's ears!!!
Well that didn't come out right. I need sleep but I'm sorry to report what I did. Stories like this do keep the faith going though.
the people who talked to Terri's parents said that Terri did have a will to live.
I know; I ping them on stuff they'd be interested in, and they'd surely think a lot of this.
Amazing! Simply Amazing!
We pray for her healing and well being.
"TT", Beth & Nana
I think txflake was trying to say we wanted some on-site influence "up there"....
FR's reach is quite broad. :-)
I could be dead right now and still freeping ;-)
I can hardly imagine anyone in human history so staunchly denied death's door.
Hope we can follow her over time, find out what she learned.
Thanks.
I think Heaven has wireless broadband. :-)
OK, looks like I have to play Devil's Advocate.
Is anyone else a little concerned that it took her family 63 days to find her, then when they finally did they didn't take her to get medical help - they put her in a tent for 2 days! It was only by luck that doctors were even told about her.
More to this story than meets the eye, there is.
Perhaps. However, some remote villages weren't even visited by outsiders until the beginning of December. Need to read the article again.
"On Monday morning a German doctor, Holger Barochmeyer, who was vaccinating people in a nearby village..."
Sounds like the village (refuge camp) she was at didn't have any medical people around.
it's a miracle.
Unbelievably inspiring. Prayers for her full recovery. I am speechless.
Is anyone else a little concerned that it took her family 63 days to find her, then when they finally did they didn't take her to get medical help - they put her in a tent for 2 days! It was only by luck that doctors were even told about her.
More to this story than meets the eye, there is.
You don't seem to have read the article...
"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."
Three extrememly poor refugees flown away from the location can hardly be calling the shots in an area that wasn't being deeply searched.
GOOD way to end the night. Thanks for pinging me.
That rainwater must have been flowing directly to where she was situated. If she had enough food to last more than two months, I'm guessing she had to be fairly mobile underneath all that rubble in order to gather it. It would certainly need to be more than what one could reach from a stationary position.
As others have said, what a miracle...
~ Blue Jays ~
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