Taking a walk between the collapsed buildings in Türkiye's quake-hit Hatay province, renowned Turkish-American heart surgeon Mehmet Oz says that he still sees hope in the "nightmare."

“There's a lot to process, the nightmare that I'm witnessing, you look inside these buildings, … these families were not able to leave their homes … there are bodies buried under these remains from buildings that people lived in for years,” Oz said, pointing to the collapsed buildings.

“Even in this horrible moment, I see hope everywhere I turn,” he said.

“Just today, I witnessed a man, who had been under this rubble for 300 hours, got pulled out, and he's gonna survive, I'm confident.”

He was referring to Samir Mohammed Ajjar, who was rescued on Saturday in the 296th hour after massive earthquakes hit the region.

Earlier in the day, Oz met Ajjar at a hospital in Hatay, where he also visited other earthquake victims.

Ajjar and his wife, who were rescued from the wreckage, were taken to the hospital by ambulance, while their children could not be saved despite the intervention made after the rescue.

“The people who are hurt are often the health care workers, the people who provide the first line of defence to a population. They're gone,” Oz said.

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'Disaster to hit world's ability to help refugees'

“Türkiye’s massive contribution for humanitarian aid and medical refugees is what I think that many appreciate, but this disaster is going to create a big strain on the world's ability to provide infrastructure support for refugees and disaster areas,” Oz said.

Türkiye is one of the largest humanitarian donors globally and hosts the highest number of Syrian migrants.

“We need to mobilise all humanity to be able to deal with already close to 50,000 deaths to be a lot more by the time we're done excavating this rubble and pulling out the 100,000 people who are missing because some of them are under that rubble,” he continued.

Calling Americans “generous,” he said that he has been pushing on his social channels to make them donate since the first day of the disaster. “And it's happening.”

“What we have to do in Türkiye, it's not just done with the acute humanitarian crisis, which everyone's focused on now. But to recognise that we have three or four years of a lot of work to rebuild this part of the planet,” he said . 

“We got to get the ruins behind me off the streets, put in solid buildings on a base that's reliable and safe.”

“And I am confident we will,” he added.

The quakes affected a wide area across 11 provinces in Türkiye, as well as neighbouring Syria.

So far in Türkiye, over 40,642 people have died and tens of thousands injured.

The toll in Syria has reached 5,814, taking the combined death toll in both countries to at least 46,456. 

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