PESHAWAR: Most injured children living in quake fear
By Our Correspondent
PESHAWAR, Nov 17: Most of the children admitted to hospitals here after the October 8 earthquake still appear to be living in fear. “I am afraid here under the roof, because I fear that an earthquake will again strike and I will be buried in the rubble,” said five-year-old Adnan Khan, who got his left leg amputated in a hospital.
His mother Rubeena said one of her five sons, Hamza Khan, 12, had died in the earthquake.
Adnan Khan, a student of nursery class at Nara Masjid School in Balakot, said he had witnessed horrifying scenes on Oct 8.
However, he said he would continue his study, preferably in a school in the open.
“My two teachers and dozens of class fellows died. I see them in my dream,” he said.
Doctors in the city’s hospitals, which house some 300 quake victims, 40 per cent of them children, have amputated the limbs of at least 35 children.
They say the main cause of so many amputations is late arrival of the victims in hospitals.
Rizwanullah, 10, admitted to the orthopaedic ward of the Khyber Teaching Hospital with a fracture, said he was in his classroom when the earthquake struck.
The student of class four at the Government Primary School, Bari, Fareedabad, Balakot tehsil, said he would not study in the school because its building might collapse.
He said he would go to a religious school after he recovered.
His father is being treated for paraplegia in the Ayub Medical Complex, Abbottabad.
His uncle, who was looking after him in the hospital said Rizwan ran out of bed and kept crying the whole night.
Rizwan said he had lost several friends in the earthquake.
Seven-year-old Ayesha, a student of class two who was undergoing treatment for head injury, said she became afraid whenever her bad moved.
“Ayesha always kept smiling before the earthquake, but now she is afraid of everything. She cannot sleep,” her mother said.
Ayesha said she would never go to school again.
Asad Khan, 11, whose both legs were fractured in the earthquake in Balakot, said he would continue to study.
