Advertisement
This Article is From Jan 23, 2010

Haiti: Woman pulled from rubble 10 days after quake

Haiti: Woman pulled from rubble 10 days after quake
AP Image
Port-au Prince: A 69-year-old woman pulled from the wreckage of a building in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince is being treated in Haiti's General Hospital on Friday.

Doctors said the woman was rescued earlier on Friday, 10 days after the magnitude-7.0 quake struck.

The woman is being treated with oxygen and intravenous fluids at Haiti's General Hospital.

Dr. Ernest Benjamin said she was "critically ill" after being trapped for so long.

He said she was "very acidotic", referring to an increase in the acidity of the blood.

"Right now as you can see she is critically ill. She is very acidotic. She manages to survive 10 days without us, so we are going to try to make sure we don't prevent her from living. So I think, I cannot tell you she has a chance, but she may," said Dr Ernest Benjamin, Doctor at Haiti's General Hospital.

Despite the woman's rescue, some teams were giving up the search on Friday and instead focusing on expanding their pipeline of food, water and medical care for survivors.

With extensive swaths of Port-au-Prince in ruins, more than 500 makeshift settlements with a population of about 472-thousand are now scattered around the capital, said a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration.

Getting them to safer quarters could take weeks.

The US Agency for International Development said on Friday that as many as 200-thousand Haitians have fled the capital and many more are trying to do so.

Haiti's government estimates the January 12 quake killed 200-thousand people, as reported by the European Commission.

It said 250-thousand people were injured and 2 million homeless in the nation of 9 million.

Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world

Follow us:
Listen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.com