Hopeless quake patients pour into hospitals

MANSEHRA—In scenes of panic reminiscent of the first, chaotic post-quake days, doctors at Mansehra’s district headquarters hospital yesterday morning surround a small child who has just been brought in. The child’s lips, like his hands, are blue and his wailing mother, Parveen, clearly fears the worst.
But 20 minutes later, doctors bring good news. Two-year-old Omar, suffering from hypothermia and pneumonia, is still alive and will likely, with hospital care, drugs, good food and most crucially of all, warmth, recover within a few days. The child, wrapped in a red blanket, an intravenous drip pumping anti-pneumonia drugs into his frail body, is already beginning to look better, his eyes starting to lose their glazed look as he stares up at the nurses standing beside the bed. “Yesterday was an awful night. We thought this child would die. He had become still, and we could hear rattling in his chest,” Omar’s father, Aziz Khan, explained. The family traveled overland to Mansehra, a large town and the capital of the Mansehra division of NWFP. They have been living in a tent for over 20 days, and Parveen, the child’s mother said: “It has just been miserable over the past two days. The snows falling in the hills have meant the winds blowing southwards are freezing and we do not even have a ground mat on which to spread our bedding.” Parveen’s two daughters are still surviving such conditions, with a neighbour. But it is already apparent the cold has taken its toll. Across the quake-affected areas, hospitals are filling up, as a new struggle begins to save lives.
“Just look around the beds. We have dozens of new patients. The number will rise to hundreds soon and we must try to save as many lives as we can,” said Dr Muneeb, at the Ayub Medical Complex, Abbotabad. The hospital, itself badly damaged in the October quake, has barely seen a few days of respite. Now patients are being brought in once more, with new ones arriving every hour.
Doctors are stressing the need for the sick, the injured, the very young and the very old in particular to be kept warm, provided with hot food and to be kept indoors but this is of course easier said than done.
Across quake-affected areas, temperatures have begun to plummet below the freezing point. Many survivors are still housed in grossly inadequate tents - and the poor quality of the shelters has meant that after rains that fell over the past two days, bedding, clothing and the tents themselves have all become drenched. Only a small percentage of victims have received winterized tents, though delivery is being speeded up as much as possible.—Agencies