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INTERNATIONAL – “I hear his pulse! In a tent, a dozen nurses take turns at the bedside of Abir, a 25-year-old Syrian woman, to give her a cardiac massage. The young woman was found alive on Tuesday February 14, eight days after the first tremors of the earthquake that has already killed nearly 40,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
After 180 hours under the rubble, Abir had “a pneumothorax” — abnormal presence of air and gas in the pleura, the membrane around the lungs and lining the chest, explains Dr. Hokenek, who oversaw the care. “It’s a miracle to find someone alive under the rubble,” remarked another doctor. as you can see in the video at the top of this article.
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Within three hours, a handful of emergency vehicles took the wounded to the field hospital visited by AFP, which is located in the parking lot of a major hospital in Antakya. “From now on, the survivors will likely be in a more critical condition. Most of them will need emergency life-saving care,” says Dr. Aydin. “Her heart stopped twice but we managed to get her back. We have done everything that the medical literature recommends. And after an hour and a half of exertion, she survived,” he says happily.
It’s a matter of minutes
“It was a very special moment, maybe the most extraordinary rescue of my life,” testified Omar, one of the nurses who gave him cardiac massages, given the circumstances in which it happened. “I’ve saved a lot of lives, but I’ve never been happier,” he adds.
More miracles could happen, Dr. Hokenek. Despite the cold, when some victims are in a secure bag under the rubble with some food or water, “which is rare,” Dr. Aydin conceded, “they might survive longer”.
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A rationale disputed by two foreign rescuers interviewed by AFP. “The person has to be really young and in good health, hypothermia is an aggravating factor. At this point, after a week, it’s really a matter of minutes.
A few minutes later, Abir was placed on a stretcher and taken to an ambulance. But as a helicopter waited to take him to a hospital in Adana, 200 kilometers away, his condition deteriorated again.
Two meters away from Abir, another injured, gray-haired woman is being subjected to the same efforts by paramedics. But AFP did not see them come out of the tent. The Turkish authorities counted more than 80,000 injured in the rubble of the disaster.
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