The missing children survived on fruit and water

A 13-year-old girl and her three younger siblings survived 40 days on their own in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia.

– The children say they ate fruit from the jungle and food from survival kits they found, says Andrés Chaparro from the military to El Colombiano.

The four children were found on Friday. They had disappeared into the rainforest after a plane crash on May 1. Earlier there were reports of four brothers, but according to local media, the three sisters are thirteen, nine and recently turned one, and a four-year-old brother.

The children belong to the indigenous Huitoto people and were on their way from the Araracuara region to the city of San José Del Guaviare when the single-engine plane they were traveling in crashed. The pilot, the children’s mother and another adult died in the accident.

Dehydration

For 40 days, the children then survived in the Amazon rainforest. They are said to have brought a sack of cassava flour from the plane wreck and ate fruit they found in the jungle.

The children are said to have also found several of the emergency packages that the military spread out in the jungle.

– Something that is important for survival is to drink fluids. Dehydration can very quickly become dangerous for children, it is a matter of hours. This means that during the 40 days they must have had access to water. Rainwater or from streams that must have been of good quality and that prevented them from being dehydrated, which for a one-year-old can happen in a few hours, says pediatrician Clemencia Mayorga to El Tiempo.

The children were dehydrated and malnourished when they were found by the rescue force, they are now being treated at a military hospital in the capital Bogotá and their condition is described as stable.

– They have taken in liquid and cannot digest food, but in general the condition of the children is good, says Minister of Defense Iván Velásquez after visiting them in the hospital.

The father is also cared for

The children will remain in the hospital for at least two weeks. They all need help to get nutrition, this mainly applies to the youngest who recently turned one, says the children’s doctor according to El Tiempo.

At the hospital is the children’s father, who is also receiving care after participating in the search for them.

– I came here with a high fever because I had slept in the rain forest without protection and got badly bitten by mosquitoes, he says to the newspaper Semana.