Colombian kids who survived plane crash continue their recovery
Bogota, Jun 17 (EFE).- The condition of the four children who spent 40 days lost in the jungle after surviving a plane crash is improving, but they remain in isolation out of concerns that their immune systems are fragile, doctors at Colombia’s Central Military Hospital said Saturday.
Lesly Mukutuy, 13; Soleiny Mukutuy, 9; Tien Noriel Ronoque Mukutuy, 5; and 1-year-old Cristin Neruman Ranoque were brought to the facility in Bogota on June 9, hours after they were rescued.
“For the Central Military Hospital it is satisfying to be able to deliver this reassuring report about the progressive improvement the children have shown,” the institution said in the latest bulletin on the youngsters’ condition.
Even so, the children must be kept in isolation due to “the high risk consequent to their basic nutritional situation, which conditions their immunological response,” the hospital said.
The kids are also receiving psychological counseling and have access to family members.
The children were found in a remote corner of jungle along the border between the southern provinces of Guaviare and Caqueta after a weeks-long search by more than 200 military personnel and indigenous people who live in the area.
It was May 1 when a Cessna 206 operated by Avianline Charter crashed with seven people aboard.
Two weeks later, searchers discovered the wreckage of the plane along with the bodies of the pilot, the children’s mother, and another adult, but no trace of the kids.
Surmising that the children had survived the crash and set out to find help, authorities launched “Operation Hope.”
EFE ocm/dr
