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Alive - after 63 days under rubble (I CAN'T IMAGINE THE HORROR)
The Sydney Morning Herald/ Agence Presse ^ | 12/16/05 (Australian time) | Agence Presse

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: pakistanquake; survivors
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The face of courage … Naqsha Bibi is plucked from the rubble of the Pakistan earthquake Photo: Reuters

1 posted on 12/15/2005 8:13:46 PM PST by paulat
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To: paulat

Man o Man, what a will to survive, an incomparably strong person! I'm drinking a toast to her as I type!


2 posted on 12/15/2005 8:17:03 PM PST by Rembrandt (We would have won Viet Nam w/o Dim interference.)
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To: paulat

amazing


3 posted on 12/15/2005 8:17:39 PM PST by wallcrawlr (Pray for the troops [all the troops here and abroad]: Success....and nothing less!!)
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To: paulat

I wonder how old she is?


4 posted on 12/15/2005 8:17:55 PM PST by CindyDawg
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To: paulat

A Freeper Prayer ping would be in order for this woman.


5 posted on 12/15/2005 8:18:04 PM PST by U S Army EOD (LINCOLN COUNTY RED DEVILS STATE CHAMPIONS)
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To: paulat


God bless and restore her.


6 posted on 12/15/2005 8:18:18 PM PST by This Just In ("Those are my principles, if you don't like them, I've got others" - Groucho Marx)
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To: U S Army EOD; Brad's Gramma; All
A Freeper Prayer ping would be in order for this woman.

I agree...does anyone here know who does prayer pings? I'm pinging Brad's Gramma because she knows a lot of folks.

7 posted on 12/15/2005 8:23:08 PM PST by paulat
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To: CindyDawg
I wonder how old she is?

It's so hard to tell...but her eyes just look haunted.

8 posted on 12/15/2005 8:25:01 PM PST by paulat
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To: paulat; sam_paine; Arrowhead1952; Old Sarge; swarthyguy; Peach; Howlin; malia; ...
HOLY COW..

Miracle ping

9 posted on 12/15/2005 8:25:20 PM PST by txhurl (hook'em)
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To: paulat

Oh, bless her! Prayers up for a full recovery.


10 posted on 12/15/2005 8:25:40 PM PST by Ladysmith ((NRA, SAS) Prepare for Override! Support Zien's PPA/CCW bill in Wisconsin.)
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To: paulat

No one can survive 63 days without food or water. It is an impossibility. Remember how long Terri S. lasted?


11 posted on 12/15/2005 8:26:49 PM PST by nmh (Intelligent people believe in Intelligent Design (God))
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To: paulat

I'm guessing by the post that she's quite young. She had to have had water, maybe rain but I don't know about food.


12 posted on 12/15/2005 8:26:52 PM PST by CindyDawg
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To: paulat
Proof that God exists.
13 posted on 12/15/2005 8:27:01 PM PST by AVNevis (www.cahsconservative.blogspot.com Great Political Discussion from the eyes of a High School Student)
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To: Ladysmith

That is some lady.


14 posted on 12/15/2005 8:27:10 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
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To: paulat; U S Army EOD; Texas Termite; manna; Okies love Dubya 2; Fawnn; Harmless Teddy Bear; ...

Oh dear Lord......PLEASE heal this dear woman!!!

Paulat and US Army...thank you so much for alerting us to this.


15 posted on 12/15/2005 8:27:10 PM PST by Brad’s Gramma (Jesus is the Reason for the Season!!!)
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To: nmh

Terri Schiavo was sick already. You can live (barely) by drinking your own urine. Besides if you have the will to live, you'd be surprised. I don't think Terri had any will because the people that surrounded her wanted her to die.


16 posted on 12/15/2005 8:28:40 PM PST by cyborg (Polar Bear Club of One)
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To: paulat

A Power much greater than all off us must have been protecting this poor woman for those 63 horrific days.

Thnakfully her prayers as well as the prayers of her family and friends were answered.


17 posted on 12/15/2005 8:29:39 PM PST by H. Paul Pressler IV
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To: Brad's Gramma
What an amazing story - it's a miracle she's alive.

Prayers for her recovery.

18 posted on 12/15/2005 8:31:20 PM PST by Victoria Delsoul
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To: CindyDawg

about 20 yrs older than she was 64 days ago


19 posted on 12/15/2005 8:32:17 PM PST by When do we get liberated? ((God save us from the whining, useless, irrelevent left...))
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To: cyborg

Well, I believe it's been fairly rainy/snowy there since the quake. I suspect she was oriented so that she was basically getting rainwater or meltwater directly somehow in the rubble.


20 posted on 12/15/2005 8:32:44 PM PST by Strategerist
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