Haiti survivor's story under scrutiny

PORT-AU-PRINCE - A rice seller may have lived under the rubble of a flea market for 27 days with little more than water and possibly fruit, a doctor said yesterday, in what would be a dramatic tale of survival four weeks after Haiti's devastating earthquake.

The man's account could not be independently confirmed, however, and the doctor conceded medical workers were sceptical at first, but he said they began to believe the man when he regained consciousness and told his story.

The man said he had just finished selling rice for the day at a downtown flea market when the quake struck on January 12. He said he didn't suffer any major injuries and was trapped on his side in an area where food and drink vendors were selling goods.

"Based on that [his story], we believe him," said Dr Dushyantha Jayaweera, at the University of Miami Medishare field hospital.

Doctors said two men took the vendor - identified as Evans Monsigrace - to a Salvation Army medical centre in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday and he was then taken to the university hospital because of his critical condition. The men who brought him said he had been trapped under the debris since the disaster.

The patient was suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition, but health care workers expressed scepticism about his story when some of his lab work came back relatively normal, Jayaweera said. Then the man regained consciousness and was lucid enough to recount a tale that seemed plausible, the doctor said.

The last confirmed survivor found in Haiti was a 16-year-old girl removed from rubble by a French rescue team 15 days after the quake. Doctors said at the time survivors may be able to sustain themselves with a water supply and without medical attention for up to two weeks.

Nery Ynclan, a hospital media officer in Haiti, said the rice vendor was in stable condition yesterday.

"Someone could not survive 28 days without water," Ynclan said of the frail 28-year-old man whose legs are rail thin. "You can go nine weeks without food."

Jayaweera said the man originally claimed that he had not had any water or food. The man had a normal kidney function with heart palpitations, suggesting he drank some water but not enough to avoid getting dehydrated, the doctor said.

"He came in delirious, asking to die," Ynclan said

"He's still out of it. He answers basic questions," she said, adding he was nibbling on chocolate and probably would be at the field hospital for a week.

The man's mother told hospital workers people clearing rubble discovered him and alerted his brothers.

A videotape shot by Michael Andrew, a freelance photographer and a volunteer at the Salvation Army medical centre, shows doctors trying without success to insert a needle into the man's arm to give him fluid.

Andrew said the man was delirious and identified himself through an interpreter as Evans Muncie, 28. The Salvation Army, in a brief posting on its website, identified him as Evan Ocinia.

Andrew said it wasn't clear whether others had provided food and water to the man. It also wasn't known why search and rescue workers were not alerted to the man's circumstances in the wrecked market.

Haiti's Government has raised the death toll for the earthquake to 230,000 from 212,000 and says more bodies remain uncounted.

Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said the government count is 230,000 dead.

But she says it does not include bodies buried by private funeral homes in private cemeteries or the dead buried by their own families.

The new figure gives the quake the same death toll as the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Yesterday Angelina Jolie began two days of meetings with earthquake victims in her role as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency.

The actor, representing the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, met UN officials in Port-au-Prince and visited an SOS Villages camp for orphans outside the capital, where she was cheered by Haitians yelling, "Angie! Angie!"

That same camp took care of 33 Haitian children after a US-based Baptist group was arrested at the Dominican border trying to take the children out of the country. Journalists were kept at a distance throughout Jolie's visit.

The American missionaries have been accused of trying to take the children out of Haiti without proper documentation.

The group says it was heading to a Dominican orphanage after the quake and had only good intentions.

Jolie also toured a Doctors Without Borders hospital in a Port-au-Prince suburb, waving to onlookers.

She and husband Brad Pitt have contributed US$1 million ($1.4 million) to Doctors Without Borders for its emergency medical operations in Haiti.

Jolie was meeting Haitians employed in a clean-up operation through a joint UN-US Agency for International Development programme before spending the night at a Brazilian military camp outside the city.

Jolie planned to visit the southern city of Jacmel, a camp for people made homeless by the quake, as well as a Save the Children relief supply centre before returning to Port-au-Prince and leaving for the Dominican Republic.

- AP