Twenty victims suffer ‘horrific injuries’
Some 20 people are being treated for “horrific injuries” in critical care following the Manchester attack, a senior NHS official has said.
Jon Rouse, chief officer of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, confirmed that some people have life-threatening injuries.
He said: “They’ve been the sort of traumatic injuries that you would expect in terms of the type of device used, the proximity to the people who were injured.
“We’re dealing with injuries to major organs, we’re dealing with loss of limbs potentially, we’re dealing with embedded objects, all the horrific injuries that you would expect from the event that happened.”
He said the victims were “receiving round-the-clock treatment from doctors and nurses”.
Some 59 people were hurt in the attack and 12 of those rushed to hospital were children.
Hospitals were on the brink of being overwhelmed by the “extraordinary” number of people with critical injuries, doctors said.
Dr Steve Jones, an A&E consultant at Manchester Royal Infirmary, said the staff at the hospital “pulled together in a very impressive way”.
Medical staff worked through the night and came in on days off to treat the victims, many of whom had suffered injuries similar to being in a car crash, he added.
“It potentially had the ability to overwhelm what we were doing,” he said.