A newborn baby girl pulled from the devastating aftermath of the Turkey earthquake has warmed the hearts of people all over the world, with thousands offering to give the tiny child a home.
Aya, or “miracle” in Arabic, was so named by doctors because her survival truly is a miracle, the BBC reported. Pulled from the rubble with her umbilical cord still attached, Aya was the lone survivor of her family who all perished when their home in Syria crumbled around them during the powerful earthquake that rocked the region Feb 6.
“She arrived on Monday in such a bad state, she had bumps, bruises, she was cold and barely breathing,” Hani Marouf, the pediatrician observing her in the hospital, told BBC.
“We named her Aya, so we could stop calling her a newborn baby. Her condition is improving by the day and there was no damage to her spine, as initially feared,” he added, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
A detail within this: the doctor’s wife is breastfeeding orphaned Aya alongside her own 4-month old https://t.co/B6tLVsHZKn
— Mishal Husain (@MishalHusain) February 9, 2023
After videos of the tiny baby’s rescue made their way across social media, thousands have contacted the hospital offering to adopt her, including a Kuwaiti news anchor who said, “I’m ready to take care of and adopt this child … if legal procedures allow me to,” the outlet reported.
Aya is not the only one orphaned by the quake. Dr. Muheeb Qaddour, deputy chief of the health department in Syria’s Idlib province, told the outlet that the situation in the country has made figuring out how many children have been left parentless too confusing at the moment.
“But now people are beginning to realise there are many children now without families. There is a great embrace of them by society. Distant relatives take them in before they would go to an orphanage. Regrettably it is only after the dust of the earthquake settles that things become clear,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald. (RELATED: ‘Disaster Of The Century’: Earthquake Deaths Top 20,000 In Turkey, Syria)
Baby Aya will be taken in by her father’s uncle, Salah al-Badran, once she is well enough to be released from the hospital, The Associated Press reported.