Mum of newborn rescued from Venezuela rubble tells BBC baby motivated her to survive
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ByAlice Cuddy, Senior international reporter and Mohamed Madi, Reporting fromCaracasPublished1 hour agoA mother who was pulled from the rubble of her wrecked home in Venezuela with her 18-day-old baby has told the BBC of how her son helped keep her alive.
Dayana Patino said her son Juan David gave her "motivation to be awake and alert". "As long as he was alive, I was going to be alive. Every now and then I was touching his nose for proof that he was still breathing," she said.
Footage of the rescue has been shared around the world, with Juan David becoming a symbol of hope in Venezuela, which has been devastated by the twin earthquakes that hit the country on Wednesday - killing at least 1,450 people. Newborn baby rescued from Venezuela earthquake rubble Published1 day agoTens of thousands more are missing in what the country's interim president has described as the "most brutal natural catastrophe" in Venezuela's history Search efforts are continuing, but hopes are diminishing that more survivors will be found. At a clinic in the Venezuelan capital Caracas on Sunday, Dayana told the BBC of the terrifying hours she had spent underground, holding her tiny son close and praying that they would be saved.
She had been doing the washing up in her eighth-floor apartment in the northern coastal region of La Guaira when the earthquakes hit. She instantly rushed to cradle her son, thinking it would be "only a light tremor".
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