American doctors ask the nation to pray for Doreen

Dar es Salaam. Doreen Elibariki (13), one of the survivors of the bus crash that killed 32 children, two teachers and a driver, is to undergo a complicated spinal surgery on Thursday.

According to Singida North MP Lazaro Nyalandu, Doreen is expected to undergo the surgery at 8 am at Mercy Medical Centre in Iowa. It will be 4pm East African time. He posted on social media, calling on all Tanzanians to pray for Doreen and the team of doctors expected to operate on her.

According to reports, the other children have already been operated on.
Yet Doreen will be going through another operation. The severely injured children were flown to the US on Sunday night by Samaritan Purse to receive treatment in Sioux City, Iowa.

The children including a boy Wilson Tarimo (12) and Sadhia Ismail (12) and  were flown via DC-8 airplane. Their mothers have accompanied them on
the journey, along with a Tanzanian doctor and nurse, as well as Ed
Morrow, director of World Medical Mission, the medical arm of
Samaritan’s Purse. They all arrived in Charlotte late Sunday night,
May 14.

According to KTIV news, a local channel in Iowa, the three children have already undergone more than 10 hours of surgery combined. Doctors say they found a total of 17 fractures among the three children, some are more severe than others.

 Dr. Steve Meyer is one of the surgeons providing their services for free, he says while the surgeries have gone better than expected, the kids still have a long road ahead of them.

 "When they got here they were relatively stable but obviously very tired and in a lot of pain, the girl we operated on last night the extent of her spine fracture, her thoracic spine fracture is much more severe than we had anticipated and we have a big hurdle to cross with her," said Dr Meyer.