~' Dhivehi Vindhu `~ For the People ~ From the Pleople

Miracle Haiti girl had nothing to eat or drink, say doctors

Darlene Etienne, 16 is
brought to hospital after being
pulled alive from the rubble of
a building in Port-au-Prince
by a French rescue team on
January 27, 2010. Severely
dehydrated and so weak she
could barely talk, Etienne
managed a whispered 'thank
you' to her rescuers after
surviving for fifteen days.
Photo courtesy AFP.

by Staff Writers
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Jan 28, 2010
Stunned doctors said a 16-year-old Haitian girl was in a stable condition Thursday after
surviving for 15 days buried in the rubble of the country's earthquake -- apparently with
nothing to eat or drink.

"Nature always surprises us," said Claude Fuilla, the head medic with a French civil
defense team in Haiti which pulled young Darlene Etienne from a collapsed building in the
capital Port-au-Prince Wednesday.

Neighbors found Etienne and alerted international rescuers who dug her out. She was
stable but suffering from advanced dehydration and is now being treated on the French
naval vessel Siroco, which is anchored off the Haitian coast.

"I am incapable of explaining it medically, but she told me this morning that she didn't eat
anything, didn't drink anything and was trapped in the initial earthquake" on January 12,
said Evelyne Lambert, the chief doctor on board the Siroco.

The girl is doing well and has managed to sleep, the doctor said.

"She has problems due to her prolonged immobilization, her legs are painful but she has
managed to move them," Lambert added.

The first rescuers to reach Etienne initially thought she may have had access to soft drinks,
but found no bottles at the scene when they checked later, doctors said.

"There were potentially some trickles of water," said Fuilla, adding that this had not been
confirmed. "When you review the literature, a hydrological fast longer than 10 days is
extremely unusual."

Doctors feared that her heart might stop at any moment because she was in such a sever
state of dehydration when she was found.

"To my knowledge, she is one of the most extreme cases of survival," added Colonel
Michel Orcel, a medic and veteran of natural disasters who runs the French field hospital
in Port-au-Prince that treated Etienne immediately after her rescue.

Rescuers have saved around 135 people from the debris since the 7.0-magnitude quake
laid waste to much of Port-au-Prince and surviving towns. The government says around
170,000 were killed, at least 200,000 injured and a million left homeless.

Etienne's ability to survive was partly down to luck, but also showed the sheer adaptability
of the human body in times of crisis, doctors said.

"Physically she was very thin, but that is not inevitably a drawback as there is not much
water in fat," said Orcel.

"The key comes from the brain which gradually adapts to the situation. It reduces the
blood pressure and the kidneys partially shut down," he said.

While the average person should consume around 1,500 calories a day, Darlene was
probably only eating around an average of 300, like many in one of the western
hemisphere's poorest nations.

"There is always a limit but the body is capable of reducing its needs for survival," said
Orcel.

Victims generally fall into a state of hibernation, which makes them intermittently lose
consciousness and allows them to pull through, he added.

"I heard about a guy who was rescued almost three weeks after the earthquake in Agadir,"
Orcel said, referring to a quake in Morocco in 1960 in which 12,000 people died.

"He was in a cellar and was able to eat and drink but he had become crazy because he
stayed completely conscious and knew he was buried alive."

In Darlene's case, doctors are confident in her ability to recover.

"It will not be too long, we have to wait for her renal functions to return. It will take four
days and she is in the best hands possible," Orcel added.

For now she has not had any contact with her family.

"No one showed up," said Lambert.

Asked what would happen to her in the future, Fuilla joked: "Maybe she will get married
to one of her 'super-rescuers' from civil defense. That would be a fairytale ending."