KATHMANDU: When the earthquake's first shock waves hit Kathmandu, patients receiving treatment at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) began scurrying out of the emergency. Some of the attendants were carrying saline water while others were seen helping the patients move.

Soon after the tremor, all the patients came out of their respective wards. Within some 15 minutes of the tremor, earthquake victims began swarming into the hospital which was already filled with in-patients.

People were howling in pain and making fruitless efforts to establish contact with their near and dear ones.

Within an hour or two all the open areas in front of the hospital building were filled with injured people. Hundreds of doctors and nurses - some in uniform and many of them in plainclothes - were busy attending the injured on the streets. Visitors and other people who reached there were also helping the injured get treatment. Hospital Management had arranged different areas for effective treatment of patients. People buried in the debris of damaged houses were retrieved by their neighbours.

One Uma Shrestha of Ason was brought at Teaching Hospital from Bir Hospital as there was no space available for treatment. She was buried after her four-storey house collapsed. "I would have died if I was not rescued for 10 more minutes," she said.

Many of the patients were injured due to falling objects.

Director of the TUTH Prof Dr Dipak Prakash Mahara, who was holding an emergency meeting, said doctors were still in confusion how to manage the post-disaster situation. He said the hospital could not count the patients because many of them might have left after treatment.

Asked what the hospital would do to more than 100 bodies lying there, he said the hospital would do what the government says.

Dr Mahara appreciated the doctors and nurses living nearby for voluntarily coming to the hospital and attending patients.

Volunteers from different organisations were also engaged in collecting fund for the help of patients and have also been urging people to donate blood.

Political leaders, including Gagan Thapa, Ramesh Lekhak and Hisila Yami had reached the hospital to help those panicking there.