Help came far too late for some Philippine typhoon victims
A father died of a broken leg as antibiotics were not available to prevent infection of his wound
Richard Pulga lay on a hard steel gurney for five days with only a saline drip after being seriously injured in the typhoon that devastated his country.
On Friday, Pulga, 27, died - essentially of a broken leg.
Doctors said the father of two small children could have been saved. Instead, he became a victim of the incompetence and inaction that have plagued relief efforts in the Philippines for the hundreds of thousands left injured, homeless, hungry and increasingly desperate since the typhoon hit nine days ago.
By the time Dr Rodel Flores, the senior surgeon with a team of visiting doctors, found Pulga on Thursday, he had received no antibiotics and his leg was badly infected. The doctor ordered an emergency amputation to try to save his life. But it was too late.
"In short," Flores said, "it was preventable."
Pulga was one of the first victims of typhoon Haiyan to be brought to the top government hospital in Tacloban city. He was there because he had tried to protect his home, sending his wife and children to a safer place as some of the highest winds ever recorded slammed into Leyte island. Those winds sent a coconut rocketing through the darkness into his leg, shattering it.