An American researcher who fell ill almost 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below the entrance of a cave in Turkey, has recovered sufficiently enough to be extracted in an operation that could last three or four days, a Turkish official was quoted as saying on Friday.
An American researcher who fell ill almost 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below the entrance of a cave in Turkey, has recovered sufficiently enough to be extracted in an operation that could last three or four days, a Turkish official was quoted as saying on Friday.
Mark Dickey, a 40-year-old experienced caver, became suddenly ill with stomach bleeding during an expedition with a handful of others in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains. Rescuers from across Europe have rushed to the cave for an operation to save him, including a Hungarian doctor, who reached and treated him.
“The doctors we sent down were very successful in treating him,” Cenk Yildiz, a regional official from Turkey’s disaster relief agency, told the IHA news agency. “We are now in a position to evacuate him.”
“This is a difficult operation. It would take a (healthy) person 16 hours to come out. This operation will last at least three or four days,” Yildiz continued. “Our priority is health.
