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Woman rescued two months after quake

B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD: A 45-year-old woman was brought to a charity field hospital in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), on Monday after she was rescued from rubble on Sunday, 63 days after the devastating October 8 earthquake.

The woman was buried alive in the Kamsar refugee camp, five km from Muzaffarabad, during the October 8 earthquake.

Hafeezur Rehman, a physician at the Pakistan Islami Medical Association (PIMA), said residents found her on Sunday evening as they were digging for missing bodies.

Refugees referred the woman to a German team after they were unable to feed her and the team, which visited the area on Monday for vaccinations, handed her over to PIMA officials.

Abdul Hamid, another physician at the PIMA hospital, told the media that the woman, identified as Naqsha Bibi, weighed only 25 kg, and had been admitted to the hospital's intensive care unit. "She is very feeble because of dehydration and muscle wastage. She has also lost her speech," he said.

"We are administering fluids. We have also given her some milk orally," Dr. Hamid said, adding that her condition was improving.

Asked if anybody could survive for such a long time without food and water, a doctor at the PIMA said: "Medical science will hardly accept it, but you know miracles do happen in this world."

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