Diary of a Tsunami Doctor |
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January 23rd, 2005 - 07:08AM |
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Photo: The IRC Hilarie Cranmer, MD, is a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine in Boston. On only a day’s notice, Dr. Cranmer departed for Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on January 7 to join the IRC’s tsunami relief teams there. She has been sharing highlights of her travels and observations in a diary. Lhokseumawe, Indonesia We are still in Lhokseumawe, and the weekend has been a little bit slow, as it is Eid, a Muslim holiday. It's basically like Thanksgiving. Downtown is surprisingly busy and commercial despite the big celebration. It's all about visiting relatives and shopping. So we went into town and bought medical waste bins and buckets with which to make water a bit cleaner than that we get from the well. So, water is a big issue. We buy water every day in large bottles (1.6 liters) to take with us to the clinic, just to drink and wash hands. There is no running water in the clinic or in the camp right across the street. So no toilets, no water for irrigation, or washing hands or dirty bottoms that have been victims of diarrhea. There is a well, but the water is thick and brown. We have these packets called PUR that you can add to 10 liters of water (a couple of gallons), and it congeals all the solid stuff together at the bottom of the bucket. Then you pour it through a towel and you have water that is still yellow. So just like snow, no drinking yellow water. We can use it for basic cleaning and rinsing, though. The acceptable number of liters a day that a patient in a hospital requires in an emergency is 15, a world wide standard. Now, they barely get one. So as you can imagine, the conditions are deteriorating for the displaced people. So number one priority is water and sanitation. Imagine a camp of 6000 people, of which are 2000 kids, of which 1 in 3 has diarrhea. And the worse the conditions, the worse the diarrhea. The other diseases are scabies, measles, respiratory infections and fever most likely due to malaria. Our second priority is the measles vaccinations. We have had over 9 cases in the clinic, despite rounding up all the kids 3 different times. So we'll round them up again this week. Again and again. Today we also went looking for another camp that we heard of that has just formed. You see, not only is tsunami a disaster, it's rainy season and it flooded out a village about 75 kilometers from here, so there are another 2000 refugees just beginning to live in close environments who likely have less than what the present refugees do. Salt in the wound.... we weren’t able to find the camp, as we had to be back to our own clinic to rendezvous with the rest of the team. Tomorrow we'll have better cars and translators to get there, as the holiday is over and we'll have worker bees again. Spent a couple of hours in the clinic, taking care of the measles kids and the diarrhea kids and the patients who showed up with very bad tuberculosis. News from the other teams is that living conditions are hard on the west coast, so much so that most of the other teams have one if not two people sick with malaria or dengue or are dehydrated. They are rotating the teams out of there quickly, so that they don't spend more than a week, and have some time to recover. I may or may not be going, will find out later tonight or tomorrow. This week will be meetings of coordination with other groups that are starting to show up, so that water and sanitation and measles are covered. So lots of busy work, did I mention how incredible the country is? Not too many westerners here in Aceh region for 4 years. So I guess I shouldn't get too freaked out when all these kids run around following me trying to touch my freckles. I realized I am the tallest woman in Indonesia the other day...we ended up on a back road, weaving in and out of rice patties, weaving around cows and goats and kids, seeing thatched houses on stilts next to marbleized mosques with plate glass windows, what Banda Aceh and the west coast must have been like before.... Ok, more later, keep the good news coming, and talk to you soon, Hilarie Posted By: Dr. Hilarie Cranmer | Asia, Diaries & Journals, Health, Tsunami Relief Permalink |
