Base infirmary seeks help

Along with medical volunteers, donations of medicines are welcome in the Benito Ebuen Air Base in Mactan where hundreds of survivors of supertyphoon Yolanda have been flown in from Eastern Visayas since Friday.

Capt. Michael S. Ching, a military doctor, said while their supplies are adequate, more medicines will be needed in the coming days.

“They also need food. We are soliciting for their food and coordinating with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) where they can stay after their discharge,” he added.

Most patients brought to the base hospital suffer from diarrhea, infection, dehydration, fractures, and skin infection.

Minor wounds were immediately treated in the airbase hospital, but serious cases, like one patient who suffered kidney failure, was transferred to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) in Cebu City.

“So far we have enough volunteers and Red Cross personnel to assist our patients here. But we are open for more volunteers to help us in the coming days,” Ching said. He anticipates an over flow in the coming days.

“I’ve raised the concern about where we can accommodate other patients if the time would come that this place would be overcrowded,” he added.

Among the patients were two pregnant women who gave birth upon arrival, and soldiers who had to be confined.

Another patient, 37-year-old Rene Orquestra, had gashes in both thighs.

Despite his wife’s text reminder not to go outdoor during the storm, Orquestra said he couldn’t ignore pleas for help from people in barangay San Jose.

A tree branch pierced his left thigh while a wayward G.I. sheet struck his right thigh when he reached out in the flood waters to get a child who was handed to him by a couple. The child’s father drifted away and went missing.

“While I was helping the child, iron and wood debris surrounded me. Someone next to me got his head cut off when the metal hit his neck,” he said.

Orquestra took shelter in a neighbor’s house that was not badly damaged and left the child with the mother. “That’s when I saw corpses lying on the road),” he said.

It was five more hours before he was rescued and flown to Mactan on an air force C-130 plane.

Orquestra’s family had evacuated before typhoon Yolanda hit the country.

“I don’t know what happened to my family. The last time I received a text message from my wife, they were inside an evacuation center,” he added.

Orquestra said he would return to Tacloban City to look for his family as soon as he can walk again.