Woman recovering after miscarriage, medevac

By EREBIRI ZURENUOC
A WOMAN from a remote village of Morobe is recovering in a hospital in Lae after she was evacuated in a helicopter last Saturday.
Mother-of-three Selina Samuel, 35, said she had a miscarriage around noon on Friday at Mama village in the Wampar local-level government of Huon Gulf.
“The pain was unbearable and I lost a lot of blood,” she said.
“The men tried calling Manolos Aviation and the provincial health office. But there was no network coverage in the village.”
Samuel said she was into her third month of pregnancy when she felt a strong pain around noon on Friday.
Her mother-in-law Dabi Rubi said with the help of the village men, Samuel was carried on a stretcher for two hour to the Fanzum Primary School.
“We were there for the whole night. On Saturday morning, we were waiting to catch a PMV to Lae.”
Fortunately, Manalos Aviation chief executive Jürgen Ruh was on a flight the same day to return the twins of late Rose Simai, a 21-year-old mother who died after giving birth on Christmas Day, to the same village.
He was told of Samuel’s case and picked her up from Fanzum Primary School.
In just less than an hour, nurses and doctors at Angau Memorial General Hospital were taking care of her.
Sister Susan Muro, one of the two flying nurses with the medevac operation said they were used to dealing with such cases in remote areas.
“Selina needed urgent medical attention because the fetus was removed already, but the womb needed to be cleaned properly,” she said.
Though it was her fourth pregnancy, she had a miscarriage because she used to carry heavy loads and climb the mountains while she was pregnant.”
She said Samuel was fine and was admitted at a ward at Angau.