Des Moines,IA : After surviving a bus crash in Tanzania that killed dozens, three children are being treated in Sioux City on may, monday 15th 2017

Getting the three children who survived a horrific bus crash in Africa to treatment in Sioux City, Iowa, seemed like a million to one shot.

“So many things had to happen to get these children here,” said Dr. Steven Meyer of Siouxland Tanzania Educational Medical Ministries. “We’re so blessed to have gotten through so many roadblocks.”

The children — each 12 or 13 years old — arrived Monday at Mercy Medical Center, where they will be treated at no cost.

They had traveled about 8,400 miles from Tanzania, on the east coast of Africa.

Their mothers, a doctor and a nurse also flew to Iowa. It took the cooperation of Tanzanian and U.S. government officials along with air transport by Samaritan’s Purse, a humanitarian organization, to get them to Sioux City.

Members of STEMM happened to be on the scene when a bus crashed into a ravine in Tanzania, killing 32 schoolchildren, two teachers and the bus driver.

The group was in Tanzania on a mission trip.

“Our people immediately got out and began to help triage the victims,” said Jon Gerdts, executive director of STEMM.

Rushing to the rescue were nurses Jennifer Hadley of Sioux City and Manda Volkert of Ponca, Nebraska. With them was Kevin Negaard, an athletic trainer who is also the executive director of Sunnybrook Community Church in Sioux City.

Gerdts and Meyer, the co-founders of STEMM, were not at the scene but went to the hospital. They decided that the surviving children needed the kind of care not available in Tanzania.

“The (injuries) are not life-threatening,” Gerdts said, “but the fractures are complex enough to need help they wouldn’t get there. How they recover could be life-changing.”

Local residents were already bringing crash victims up out of the ravine when the STEMM volunteers stopped, Negaard said. Most of the children were dead.

“It was a horrific scene,” Negaard said.

Identifying those who had a chance of survival was the most urgent need, he said, and Hadley and Volkert worked quickly. “They did a great job.”

Only first names of the survivors — two girls and a boy — are available. Wilson, the boy, was knocked unconscious. Negaard later found he spoke excellent English.

The STEMM volunteers didn’t think that Sadia, who appeared to have a traumatic brain injury, would make it.


Source :
After surviving a bus crash in Tanzania that killed dozens, three children are being treated in Sioux City