BOGOTA: Four children who survived weeks alone in Colombia’s Amazon jungle have been reunited with their family and undergoing treatment in hospital.
Fidencio Valencia, their grandfather, told the BBC that the siblings, aged 13, nine, five and one, were “very weak” but “happy to see their family.”
Officials said that they were speaking a little and two of them have starting playing.
After more than a month of searches by the military and locals, the four kids were located on Friday.
After their aircraft crashed on May 1, they vanished without a trace. In the crash, two pilots and their mother perished.
Rescuers found them after finding footprints and fruit that had been bit into in the jungle, among other clues.
The oldest, Lesly, 13, led the two youngest children—a one-year-old infant and a five-year-old—through the trauma while they celebrated their birthdays in the bush.
According to official, Valencia, they survived by consuming flour that they discovered in the plane’s wreckage and subsequently seeds.
Ivan Velasquez, Colombia’s defence minister, complimented Lesly for caring for her younger brothers when he visited them in the hospital on Saturday together with President Gustavo Petro.
“The three others were able to survive because of her care and her knowledge of the jungle,” Mr. Velasquez added. “It is thanks to her, her value and her leadership.”
The boy and the girls are generally in a respectable state, and the medical reports declare that they are not in any danger.
They have “nutritional deficiencies,” according to military doctor Carlos Rincon, but they have managed to survive with just “some soft tissue injuries, bites, and skin lesions.”
He said: “We will start the process of introducing food after we complete the procedure of clinical examinations that will be done today. They are not yet able to eat. We anticipate that they will remain in the hospital for two to three weeks if all goes well.
The Colombian Institute of Family Welfare’s general director, Astrid Caceres, claimed that the kids “don’t talk as much as we would like them to” and need some downtime.
However, she said that two of the kids had been playing.
The kids are from the indigenous Huitoto people. Indigenous individuals who volunteered to assist with the rescue effort were recognised by General Pedro Sanchez, who oversaw the search operation.
He said to reporters, “We found the children: miracle, miracle, miracle!”
Some rescuers are still looking for a Belgian Shepherd rescue dog that got lost when they were looking for the kids in the jungle.
After their rescue, the grandmother of the kids, Fatima Valencia, said: “I am very grateful, and to mother earth as well, that they were set free.”
They were able to survive in the bush because the oldest of the four siblings was accustomed to caring for the other three while their mother was at work, according to the woman.
“She gave them flour and cassava bread, any fruit in the bush, they know what they must consume,” Ms. Valencia stated in video that EVN was able to secure.
The president of Colombia posted a picture of rescuers making a bottle for a child.
