Letter 1 by Dr. Taimur Zaman

Thank you all for the e-mails and support. About 10,000 earthquake victims have been transferred to tertiary care hospitals in the Islamabad/Pindi area. Others have been sent South to Lahore. 10% of these patients are
paraplegic. Despite surgeries to fix their spine they are unlikely to ever walk because the jagged edges of fractured bones severed nerves in the spinal cord. I have not seen so many paraplegics in my 15 years of
Neurology. In our halls of Medicine after we are done making rounds we debate whether it would be worse to end up with bilateral lower extremity amputations or to have permanently paralyzed legs or to have never been removed from the rubble. In addition there are patients lying in comatose or semi-comatose states after head trauma. Right now everyone is in the relief mode. Hospitals are eager to do everything; family members are present at bedside helping nurses move, feed and dress the patients, change diapers and even administer medications. Donations are pouring in to pay for their care. In a couple of months when these patients do not start to walk or talk all this enthusiasm will die down. Plugs will be pulled and a second round of fatalities will emerge which may take the total death toll well into six figures. The only way to help disabled patients survive
would involve setting up nursing homes and also train nurses to provide home-care services.
 

Near the hospital is a newly established residential facility for children (prob. the first of its kind in Pakistan) where injured kids and their parents are provided short-term housing. These children have injuries that are relatively minor and do not require hospitalization. I was asked to stop by and assess the ones with
head injuries. In their playground there were about a dozen kids less than ten years of age who were running around with shaven heads and long embroidered wounds on their scalp. At least for now these children seem to be coping better than adults probably because of their short attention span.
  Regards,
Taimur Zaman