< /p> A child patient sleeps at a temporary field hospital run by the Indian Army in Iskenderun, southeast Turkey, on February 10, 2023.
Ankara – A devastating earthquake deprived hundreds of children in Turkey not only of their homes, but also of their names. They survived, but at present they cannot be identified and their parents are dead or untraceable. It was written by BBC News, according to which Turkish health officials are reporting more than 260 injured children in the disaster zone, whose names have not yet been released.
Advertisement'; }
Photo gallery: Earthquake in Turkey and Syria
< /p>
Doctor Nursah Keskin holds the hand of a little girl in the intensive care unit – known only by the tag on her bed: “Anonymous”. He has multiple fractures, a bruise on his eye and a badly bruised face, the British station describes. “We know where they found her and how she got here. But we are trying to find out the address. The search continues,” says pediatrician Keskinová, who also works as the deputy director of the hospital in the city of Adana.
There are also many children from other regions affected by the earthquake in this medical facility. Rescuers brought them here because the hospital in Adana is still standing. Many other health centers in the disaster zone have collapsed or are damaged. Adana thus became a rescue center, reports BBC News. In one transfer, for example, newborns were rushed there from the maternity ward in the hard-hit hospital in the city of Iskenderun.
In Adana, many injured children are also in the surgical ward. One of them is a girl who, according to doctors, is five or six years old. She is asleep and on an intravenous drip. He has a head injury and multiple fractures, describe medical professionals. She has not yet been able to tell the doctors her name. “He only communicates with us using eye contact and gestures,” describes doctor and pediatric surgeon Ilknur Banlicesurová.
“These kids can't talk because of the shock. They know their names. Once they stabilize after a few days, we can [try to] talk to them,” he explains. Meanwhile, Turkish health officials are trying to link the unidentified children to specific addresses. Often, however, they find only the ruins of former buildings in their place.
Turkish social networks are filled with posts of missing children, who give details of which floor of the collapsed buildings they lived on, and express the hope that they have been rescued and taken to hospital, reports BBC News. At the same time, surviving relatives and officials from the Ministry of Health are traveling between medical centers trying to find them. They are shocked and exhausted. Everyone in this medical facility is a survivor – patients and medical professionals alike. Keskinová lost relatives in the earthquake and took refuge in the hospital with her children during the subsequent tremors. “Thank God, I still have my children. I can't imagine a greater pain for a mother than the loss of a child,” she confided to the reporter. . Some of them have already made it. But others remain anonymous children of the earthquake, writes BBC News.
