After the Wave: An E.R. Doctor's Journal |
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February 17th, 2005 - 10:55AM |
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Photo: The IRC Emergency room physician Rachel Moresky went to Indonesia shortly after the devastating tsunami of December 26. She spent a month in the province of Aceh, where she served as a health officer for the IRC's mobile emergency relief team. Dr. Moresky provided public health assistance on large-scale measles immunization projects, treated patients in camp clinics and helped set up an ER. She brought home a journal of her experiences, which we will be posting here. Here is the first entry. Just 3 days after the tsunami irrevocably changed thousands of lives in south east Asia, Dr. Rick Brennan, the IRC's health director, invited me to work in one of the hardest hit areas – Indonesia's northern Sumatra province of Aceh. As we would learn in the coming weeks, the presence of an already significant displaced population and the fact that Aceh was already in a civil state of emergency would exacerbate the complicated tsunami relief effort on the island. Week One Jakarta Jan. 10-11 We arrived in Jakarta in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. After an exhausting 24-hour flight from New York to Jakarta, we underwent physical examinations and received Japanese Encephalitis shots. We had no idea what to expect; I had brought clothes to wade in water, a personal filter to drink clean water, and a sleeping bag and mosquito tent to serve as a mobile home. We were not sure whether we would be carrying bodies, performing amputations, delivering babies, or working on measles campaigns. We soon heard stories of doctor kidnappings by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in the Aceh region; the kidnappings were motivated by the fact that the GAM had no access to medical care and wanted medical personnel to treat their communities and wounded soldiers. The staff in Jakarta admitted that there was little media coverage in many of the conflict areas; consequently, they did not actually know much about the state of things in the more remote areas. Our deployment from Jakarta was put on hold for two days, since there were a plethora of non-governmental organizations and reporters flying to Banda Aceh through Medan (the closest major airport). We were eager to fly straight from Jakarta to Banda Aceh, but we knew that the airport in Banda Aceh was having a hard time getting people and supplies out quickly. At last, a major at the U.S. embassy put us in touch with USAID, so we were able to jump aboard a New Zealand military plane that was flying directly from Jakarta to Banda Aceh. The flight, filled with members of the Australian Air Force, Indonesian NGOs, and journalists, lasted three hours. When we landed at the military airport in Banda Aceh, I was overwhelmed by both the scale of operations and the seeming chaos that resulted from it. There were countless stacks of brightly colored boxes, bearing names of NGOs and national governments, filled with food and non-food aid. The area was swarming with local and international NGOS. NGO personnel seemed to possess a singular focus on cleaning and rebuilding. As we drove out of the airport, local residents along the way were mirroring NGO efforts, as they swept, scrubbed and rebuilt the wreckage around them, in a heroic effort to return their lives and homes to some semblance of normalcy. Posted By: Kathleen Sands | Asia, Diaries & Journals, Health, Tsunami Relief Permalink |
