Kathmandu: Nepalese doctors set up makeshift operating theatres in a hospital car park on Sunday as they worked round the clock to treat the wounded from a monster quake that has also left morgues overflowing with bodies.
As disaster officials said nearly 6,000 people were injured in Saturday’s 7.9 magnitude quake, medics in the Himalayan nation told how they could not save some of the most grievously wounded.
Their efforts were being further hampered by fresh aftershocks that were felt throughout much of the morning, making many patients too scared to stay inside medical facilities. Samir Acharya, a doctor at Annapurna Neurological Hospital, described how medics were working out of a tent set up in a parking lot after being overwhelmed by patients.
Even if there was room, some were too scared to stay in the building, said Mr Acharaya, who, together with his colleagues, has been flat out ever since the earthquake struck on Saturday. “We have treated many people since yesterday, the majority children. Most patients have head injuries or fractures. Two of our patients died, two are critical,” said Mr Acharya.
With the death toll from the disaster rising, hospitals were also struggling to find places to store the bodies. At the city’s oldest Bir Hospital, there were around a dozen dead bodies placed on the floor with relatives trying to swat away the flies. A security guard said that around 100 bodies had been taken away for cremation since Sunday morning.
Sick and wounded people lay on a dusty road outside Kathmandu Medical College while hospital workers carried more patients out of the building on stretchers and sacks. Oxfam Australia chief executive Helen Szoke said the nation’s creaking infrastructure was struggling to cope with the scale of the disaster.
With Nepal’s government overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, India flew in medical supplies and members of its National Disaster Response Force, while China sent in a 60-strong emergency team. Pakistan’s army said was sending four C-130 aircraft with a 30-bed hospital, search and rescue teams and relief supplies.
The US together with European and Asian nations sent emergency crews to reinforce those scrambling to find survivors in the devastated capital Kathmandu and in cut-off rural areas.
