Aftershock In Pakistan

Bob Simon Reports On NYC Paramedics Saving Lives In Disaster Zone

(CBS) 
Fourteen-year-old Mehnaz Beebee’s hand was caught under rubble and all the medics could do was cut away the dead and gangrenous flesh. Whether she would ever regain use of her hand would depend on how quickly she can be flown by helicopter to a hospital.

"Sometimes you call and you call and those poor people have to wait day after day sitting there," says Connelly.

A helicopter did come, and the paramedics took the patient on the run to a nearby field. But the chopper never landed.

The incident frustrated Connelly. “I mean, when’s the next one? Next week?”

The only certainty is the next patient. There’s always a next patient. No one had ever seen so many kids with so many head wounds.

Not only were wounds being treated for the first time since the earthquake. Children were laughing for the first time, too.

But then, an 18-month-old boy was brought into the emergency room. His name is Nadeem and his father carried him down the mountain. The trip took five hours.

Nadeem’s mother had a heart attack and died when she saw their house collapse and kill ten family members. And now, Nadeem is dying.

The little boy had hardly eaten since the earthquake, has double pneumonia and is dangerously dehydrated. The only hope is to get some fluid into him quickly and to get the Pakistani army to send in a chopper.

“We need to get him out of here. He’s completely unresponsive. He’s not responding to anything anymore,” Suarez informs a Pakistani doctor over the field phone.

They can’t find a vein, so they have to inject the drip directly into his shinbones. After tense moments, there is finally a sign of life.

"Look at him open his eyes now!" Summers says.

The little boy started to cry, an amazing sight to Summers. "I mean, we thought he was about to die."

And things got even better. A chopper landed and the medics handed the boy over to his father.

"You give him back his son," says Steve Muth. "His son's going to be fine. You can see it in their eyes. They're not going to forget you. They're not going to forget you're from where you're from. It will be two generations. They'll still be saying, 'you know, when you were a kid, it was the Americans that came after the earthquake.' They won't forget."

Two days after that helicopter took off, 60 Minutes found Nadeem in a Pakistani hospital. He was doing okay. We also learned that Mehnaz Beebee, the girl who had been left behind, was picked up eventually and taken to a hospital as well.

And the New York medics? A few months later, they made a return trip to Pakistan and treated thousands more people. Which was appreciated, since donations given to the victims of this earthquake fell far short of what was needed.

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[Editor's Note: Nick Lobel-Weiss e-mailed us the following update on what NYC Medics has been doing since the first airing of our report.]

After our return from Pakistan and the airing of the 60 Minutes segment, our new organization, NYC Medics, raised nearly one million dollars in donations, in-kind contributions and equipment.

In February, with support from the Disaster Resource Network of the World Economic Forum, we returned to Pakistan, this time to the remote Northwest Frontier Province. We set up a larger field hospital and treated 10,000 people in less than one month.

We also contacted The Weyerhaeuser Company, who agreed to donate hundreds of shelters for homeless earthquake victims. UPS provided the shipping. We made sure the shelters got to widows and their children in the mountains.

NYC Medics is now prepared to respond to the next disaster, wherever it may occur. To find out more about us, and to contribute toward our next mission, visit our website at www.nycmedics.org.