The four children were rescued on June 9 and are now fully recovered. They will be temporarily under the guardianship of the national child protection agency.
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“They have regained (…) weight, they are even doing very well”, according to the authorities. The four indigenous children rescued from the Amazon jungle in Colombia were discharged from hospital on Thursday evening after a month of treatment in a military hospital, the national child protection agency said on Friday (July 14).
Since their rescue on June 9, Lesly (13), Soleiny (9), Tien Noriel (5) and Cristin (1) had been hospitalized at the military hospital in Bogota. According to Astrid Caceres, director of the Colombian Institute for the Protection of the Family (ICBF), there are no physical consequences of their 40 days of wandering in the forest, where they ended up after a plane crash in which their mother and two other adults died. Even Cristin, who was less than a year old when the plane crashed on May 1, is “completely recovered in terms of physical development”added the manager.
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So far, only footage is known of when a group of natives found the children among the vegetation. The video, filmed on a cell phone, shows them haggard and terribly thin. In the hospital, special treatment was given to them and they were fed with preparations of the Uitoto ethnic group to which they belong, such as cassava flour.
A documentary in the making
The ICBF will retain guardianship of the siblings for at least six months, as “further investigation is needed on the situation and the family environment” children.
After the rescue, a battle erupted between the maternal grandparents and the father of the two youngest children over who would have custody of them. According to a complaint from the grandfather, the man abused the mother. In the meantime, they will live with other children in an ICBF home, the whereabouts of which have not been disclosed. Astrid Caceres only assured that they would live in a rural area, where they would feel “comfortable”. The Colombian government rigorously protected the siblings from any media exposure. President Gustavo Petro recently announced the preparation of a documentary on their survival in the forest.