Memoirs of a Red Cross Doctor by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Medical
ISBN: 9781526716903
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2017-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

PART 6

INTERLUDES: AID TO ARMENIA AND SIBERIA

Chapter 21

Armenian Earthquake

I’m often amazed by the ingenuity of people struggling to recover from war or disaster. Following the earthquake in Armenia in 1988, I went over there several times for the British Red Cross who had decided to build a children’s clinic in Gjumri, Armenia’s second city, which had suffered heavily from the damage. As part of the assessment, I travelled widely in the earthquake region finding out what medical facilities were left intact and functioning.

Most hospitals were struggling, especially the smaller provincial ones. Electricity supplies to many villages had been cut off. The alternative for these hospitals was a generator, but diesel fuel was in short supply and deliveries erratic as the transport system had been severely disrupted and many of the roads, especially in the mountains, were now impassable. So the hospitals were trying to manage without electricity, with the result that the health care they could deliver was very limited. Except at one hospital. It was in a small town difficult to get to by road but had a small railway station on the main line to Gjumri. Two friendly and enthusiastic nurses showed me round the hospital. They had a few patients but no electric lights working, just candles in some of the darker rooms. I saw an old X-ray machine in one room. They usually need a lot of power.

‘I suppose you can’t do any X-rays now?’ I asked.

‘Yes, we can do X-rays; in fact one of the patients needs a chest X-ray. Would you like to see it working?

I said I’d love to, wondering how they were going to power it up. ‘I haven’t seen a generator.’

‘No, we don’t have one.’

I was thinking wind turbine, solar panels, treadmill ...

The other nurse looked at her watch. ‘I don’t think we have enough time; better wait until after the 3 o’clock train.’

I was intrigued.

We had tea and biscuits and the first nurse explained: the railway ran alongside the hospital grounds. It had overhead electrical wires and her husband was an electrical engineer. When they wanted power, he would take two huge metal hooks connected to thick cables and throw them up over the overhead wires and plug the hospital into the railway’s supply. The reason we had to wait until after 3 o’clock was that the Gjumri express came through then and her husband had to make sure there was nothing on the wires at that time. I had nightmare visions of a train coming early one day and speeding away, dragging an X-ray machine behind it.

Implementing earthquake relief can involve unexpected difficulties. During the aftermath of the Armenian earthquake, many relief agencies including the Red Cross were trying to get through the usual bureaucracy while plane loads of aid were coming into the airport at Yerevan. On a very busy day, a certain famous singer and actress flew independently into Yerevan to see for herself all the damage. But because the Armenian officials were all keen to meet

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