Authorities are still assessing the damage after the quake, with a 7.7 magnitude, claimed the lives of at least 3,000. An aftershock, with a 6.4 magnitude, struck 12 minutes after the earthquake hit.
Hundreds more were still missing days after the earthquake.
Franklin Graham, who leads Samaritan’s Purse, says disaster recovery teams are helping the injured at a mobile hospital in Yangon, the capital city.
“You have broken arms and legs, and crushed spines,” Graham says of the injuries. “Heads have been bashed in from falling concrete.”
With a hospital staff of 25 personnel on board, a Samaritan’s Purse DC-8 cargo plane transported its mobile hospital to Yangon on Monday. The hospital unit will provide an emergency room, two operating rooms, an in-patient ward, pharmacy, and a lab.
Graham tells AFN the hospital is a 60-bed facility that allows medical staff to do everything from x-rays and emergency room care to delicate surgeries.
Myanmar, a poor nation of 54 million, was formerly known as Burma. It is currently under military rule and in the middle of a civil war. A government-ordered ceasefire was finally declared Wednesday, five days after the earthquake, to help speed up relief efforts.
An on-the-scene story by the BCC, which quoted shocked and hungry quake survivors, said Myanmar’s military rulers were forced to request international aid despite poor relations with countries such as the U.S. and Great Britain.
Samaritan’s Purse, which has included Myanmar's children in its Operation Christmas Child, maintained an office there from 2017 2022.
“I would encourage people to pray,” Graham urges. “That is the most important thing that we can do, is to pray for the people of Yangon and Miramar. It's so important.”
