This Article is From Sep 14, 2014

Nobody's Child: Will This Baby in Flood-Battered Kashmir Find a Home?

For now, the infant is safe, but with an uncertain future.

Srinagar: In flood-battered Jammu and Kashmir, the story of an infant just a few days old, saved by the army in a miraculous operation on the second day of the floods, has become one of hope - and despair.

The baby was saved from the now deserted and desolate children's medical facility at GB Pant hospital in Srinagar, along with 300 other children. But doctors couldn't track down his parents. Today, he is nobody's child; no one knows his name or whether anyone will even come forward to claim the baby.

"He will stay with us as long as possible," Brigadier NS Lamba, the army doctor, told NDTV.

For now he is safe, but his future is uncertain. When the Army evacuated the hospital, the priority was to rescue babies and then women. Men were brought out last, so the Army is not sure whether this baby's father died as the waters enveloped the hospital, or whether he is stranded somewhere and alive.

Mercifully, the infant is in good health, swaddled in orange and pink blankets, oblivious to the death and devastation from which he was brought out alive. The Army knows it cannot keep the child with them forever.

Inside the hospital at the cantonment in the city's Badami Baghdad area, local Kashmiri doctors are helping Army doctors treat hundreds of children. 50 children are still not out of danger; ten of them are in critical condition.

Almost a week after the floods hit, parts of the cantonment are still under water, and a 10 minute chopper ride from an old airfield is the only way to this area. Some children were flown in from the remote region of South Kashmir - an area worst hit by the floods.

Among them is Anika, five, who has suffered breathing trouble and is trembling with pneumonia that doctors believe she has contracted in the floods. Her mother has not left her side for five days. Heartbroken and scared, she breaks down in a stream of helpless tears.

"The child has contracted both encephalitis and pneumonia that we believe is because of the floods. She is having trouble breathing and has a serious respiratory disorder," said Squadron Leader Aneja, a doctor.

On every bed, there is a little baby fighting to live. While thousands of migrant workers from Bihar and UP have gathered outside Srinagar's airport in a frantic rush to get out of the state, in the hospital, two women sit stoically in the ICU, knowing they must stay back for their children.
Every bed in the hospital tells the story of a miracle rescue.

A pregnant woman was flown in from Anantnag for an urgent delivery. Both baby and mother are well.

Even when lives are saved, there may be no happy endings. Like a four-day-old baby, who waits for a family to call him their own.

Nature's fury has been compounded by man-made carelessness to leave Kashmir's children the worst-hit.
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