Reshma, who survived seventeen days after an eight-storey building collapsed, resting in Savar Cantonment Hospital on the outskirts of Dhaka yesterday.
SAVAR: Bangladeshi officials gave the first account yesterday of how a “miracle” survivor pulled from a collapsed building managed to emerge alive 17 days after the disaster and hailed her indomitable spirit.
Reshma, 18, a seamstress who was dug out from rubble of the garment factory on Friday, drank rainwater and had found lunch boxes of coworkers “from which she got some food”, Major General Chowdhury Hassan Suhrawardy told a news conference.
“She has made history. She is an example not only for Bangladesh but also for the world,” Suhrawardy told reporters as the death toll from the impoverished nation’s worst industrial accident hit 1,110.
The painfully thin woman, who TV footage showed smiling shyly from her hospital intensive care bed, had been “trapped in a place spacious enough for her to crawl comfortably”, said Suhrawardy, who has headed the relief effort.
Reshma was wearing a fresh dress when she was rescued, taken from a box of clothes she found and had cut her hair with a pair of scissors “because it is so hot under the rubble”, he said.
But “she still can’t sleep well. She gets frightened every now and then and the nurse has to hold her hand to comfort her”, he added.
Colonel Azizur Rahman, who leads the medical team looking after Reshma, told reporters she suffered “some metabolical changes” due to malnutrition and her kidney function level had dropped to 40 percent.
“She is improving” and is now eating rice and semi-solid food, he added.
The rescue of Reshma has brought “renewed vigour” to the relief efforts, army rescue officer Major Delwar Hossain said.
AFP
