Parents retrieve quake children from hospitals

Bouncing from one end of his bed to the other, 10-year-old Muhammad Shafiq is luckier than most. Having survived the deadly quake of 8 October in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, he was taken to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, where he recovered from his wounds only to gain a reputation for his strong sense of mischief. But for the past two weeks doctors had been in a quandary over who he was, much less his parent’s identity and whether they were in fact still alive. That all changed on Tuesday, however, when an uncle arrived from the northern city of Gilgit to retrieve him. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster that killed so many in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, scores of children like Muhammad, many of them badly injured, became separated from their families. They languished in hospitals far away from their homes in cities such as Islamabad and Rawalpindi that survived the quake’s wrath – but without their parents or family to accompany them. Testament to the problem, hospital officials placed photos of those children’s whose identities were unknown at the entrance of Pakistan’s Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), one the country’s most renowned hospitals and a large receiver of many children like Muhammad – many of whom were so badly injured, they couldn’t barely speak for themselves. “Things are better than before,” Dr Tahir Mahmood, an attending physician in the children’s ward of PIMS, clarified. “This was a burning issue in this country which is now being resolved,” he said, referring to innumerable media reports of some children being discharged by strangers, potentially to even abusive situations, while some hospitals were inundated with offers to adopt the children from around the world.

Photos of injured children from the 8 October quake greet visitors at the entrance to PIMS medical centre in Islamabad

But in a country that places such high value on family, the government was quick to respond. Security was beefed up at the entrances to most hospitals and family members found themselves compelled to prove their relations with the child in question. “We process the identity of the children very carefully so they do not land up in the wrong hands,” Dr Anjum Javed, director of PIMS children’s hospital, said, declining to comment on the situation in other hospitals in the country. “These children will not be handed over to anybody unless we get clearance from the government,” he claimed. “We have received calls from all over the world with offers to adopt these children, but from the first day our policy has been that these children are not for adoption,” Dr Waseem Khawaja, assistant director of PIMS, added. Communications with Muzaffarabad, where most of the children came from, had improved substantially and most unaccompanied children had been identified, Khawaja added. “Almost 80 to 90 percent of all the children’s parents have been contacted,” he said, citing a strong media campaign and a deluge of photos to assist them. “At the moment we have only 14 children unattended,” the hospital official claimed, a significant improvement over two weeks earlier. “With the passage of time, we should be able to locate their parents,” he asserted, adding that the Pakistani government had assumed full responsibility of any such children. “These children will not be handed over to anyone,” he stressed. But not all children at PIMS have been reunited with their families. Surrounded by several stuffed animals and toys donated by outsiders, five-year-old Yasemin, who arrived on 12 October, cries out for a glass of water, a request the doctor declines. Trapped under her home for days with severe lacerations and a concussion, her right arm was amputated at the elbow and she is about to have another round of surgery. She’s unaware that both her parents and three siblings perished in the quake. Only her grandfather and stepmother have survived, but they have yet to come forward to claim her. Meanwhile, the challenge of assisting survivors of Pakistan’s worst quake in 100 years continues at hospitals throughout the country.

Five-year-old Yasemin has little idea that most of her family is dead

Since 8 October, PIMS has received 4,598 patients, the vast majority from Muzaffarabad, and admitted over 1,000, many of them children, flown in by helicopter or taken overland. To date, the hospital has carried out almost 450 CAT scans and more than 18,000 X rays. “Many patients came in with multiple bone fractures which will account for that,” Khawaja explained, adding many people were also left paralysed. “Unfortunately, most of them will not recover,” the doctor said. Also at PIMS, an additional 620 ultrasounds have been carried out, over 16,000 laboratory tests, as well as over 2,000 operations - both major and minor - including more than 20 amputations. Asked how they were coping, Khawaja maintained they had no shortage of staff or medicine. “Our problem is bed capacity, which we have already increased from 1,000 to 1,400.We can increase it more if need be,” he claimed, referring to the possibility of opening a larger tented facility to cope with the overflow. “We have received the maximum number of patients, but will continue to receive more if need be,” he said. A quick glance outside provides ample evidence he may do just that, with scores of survivors lying on beds in corridors and halls from Pakistan’s worst disaster in its 58-year history.