Samaritan’s Purse has brought three severely injured Tanzanian children, the only survivors of a bus accident that killed 35 people and recently made world news, to the United States. They will be receiving specialized trauma care at a hospital in Sioux City, Iowa.
On Friday, May 12, Samaritan’s Purse sent our DC-8 airplane to Tanzania to pick up the children—Wilson, a 12-year-old boy; Sadhia, a 12-year-old girl; and Doreen, a 13-year-old girl. Their mothers have accompanied them on the journey, along with a Tanzanian doctor and nurse, as well as Ed Morrow, director of World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan’s Purse. They all arrived in Charlotte late Sunday night, May 14, and were quickly transferred to a specially equipped Phoenix Air plane that transported them to Sioux City.
“When I heard about the tragic bus accident in Tanzania and the three children who survived, I knew Samaritan’s Purse had to do everything we could to help,” President Franklin Graham said.
Thirty-two of the children’s primary school classmates and three adults—two teachers and the driver—were killed in the May 6 crash when their bus plunged off a gravel road into a steep ravine in remote northern Tanzania. They were on the way to another school to take an exam when the accident occurred. Tanzania President John Magufuli called the accident a national tragedy.
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