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KATHMANDU. — Overwhelmed doctors moved hundreds of patients onto the streets of Nepal’s capital yesterday when aftershocks rattled hospitals and buildings already damaged by an earthquake that killed more than 2 400 people and devastated Kathmandu valley.
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.
Doctors set up an operating theater inside a tent and rushed in the most critical, following a particularly big tremor that sent people running terrified into the streets. The aftershock, itself a strong 6.7 magnitude quake, triggered more avalanches in the Himalayas after Saturday’s 7.9 quake – which unleashed Everest’s worst disaster and was the strongest since 1934 when 8 500 people were killed.
Outside the National Trauma Centre in Kathmandu, patients in wheelchairs who had been under treatment before the earthquake hit joined hundreds of injured with fractured and bloody limbs, who lay inside tents made from hospital sheets. “We only have one operation theatre here. To be able to provide immediate treatment we require 15 theaters. I am just not able to cope,” said Dipendra Pandey, an orthopedic surgeon, adding he had done 36 critical operations since Saturday. — Reuters.
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