Quake casualties overwhelm Indonesian health workers
Mamuju, Indonesia - Indonesian medics battled exhaustion and the risk of COVID-19 as they raced on Monday to treat scores of people injured by a devastating earthquake on Sulawesi island.
At least 84 were killed and thousands left homeless by the 6.2-magnitude quake that struck early on Friday, reducing buildings to a tangled mass of twisted metal and chunks of concrete in the seaside city of Mamuju.
Doctors in hazard suits treated patients with broken limbs and other injuries at a makeshift medical centre set up outside the only one of the city’s hospitals that survived relatively intact - one was flattened by the violent tremor.
A handful of doctors and nurses worked ‘non-stop’ in the first couple of days after the quake until reinforcements arrived, but it was still barely enough amid shortages of medicine and other supplies.
“We were completely overwhelmed at one point,” said Indahwati Nursyamsi, director of West Sulawesi General Hospital.
“My nurses were also quake victims and had to help their families.”
Medics scrambled to quarantine COVID-19 positive patients in a bid to prevent an outbreak at the crowded open-air triage centre. Some with coronavirus have been put in a prayer room at the back of the hospital.
The hospital was trying to open up more rooms for surgery and erect additional tents outside to treat the injured.
But fears that another quake could bring down the building adding to the challenges as patients, and some staff, refused to stay inside.