Once a storage facility for a local farmer’s cooperative, the corrugated iron warehouse in the village of Tanabasir is now sheltering hundreds of displaced tsunami victims squatting on straw mats. Some of them have tried to create a semblance of privacy by setting up cardboard screens; others have fallen asleep in the midst of the noisy crowd. Outside, the yard is filled with smoke from the many charcoal fires used to cook noodles.
The camp is one of several in the area around Lhoksemauwe on Sumatra’s devastated northeast coast where the IRC is the only international organization providing emergency health services.
Dr. Rachel Moresky is on her daily camp round. After a brief consultation with the medical staff of the local health post, she turns to the many patients that require urgent attention. Almost all children here suffer from diarrhea and display infected sores from scabies on their hands and feet. After only a few minutes, Moresky identifies the first case of dysentery. She immediately organizes a transfer to the local hospital in Lhoksemauwe, which the IRC recently stocked with medical supplies.
“The situation here is pretty grim,” she sighs. “Nobody here is immunized against measles, even though the disease has a 25 percent mortality rate among infants in camp settings like these. I’m also concerned that a lot of the children here are showing signs of borderline malnutrition.”
The IRC has launched a comprehensive measles vaccination campaign in Tanabasir and the village of Senedon, half an hour away. But many children slip though the cracks, as the tsunami destroyed most health infrastructure, swallowing medical files, journals and name lists.
“We get a lot of conflicting numbers,” Moresky says. “There is also a cultural resistance against injections in children younger than nine months, so we have to spend a lot of time explaining why measles and tetanus vaccinations are so important right now.”
A young mother approaches, carrying her one-year-old son, Mukhlis, in her arms. The child is coughing and looks fatigued. Concerned, Dr. Moresky listens to the boy’s lungs. She diagnoses Mukhlis as having aspiration pneumonia, a potentially lethal condition. In his case, it’s a result of bacterial tsunami water entering his respiratory tract and causing an infection.
“He needs antibiotics and oxygen,” she says. “We have to get him to the hospital immediately.”
Dr. Moresky and her colleagues have helped set up a referral system between health posts and the few hospitals in the region which have begun to function again. Many facilities lack proper equipment and supplies, but the IRC has been restocking empty pharmacists’ shelves and doctors’ clinics.
To prevent mass outbreaks of disease in the surrounding camps, IRC water and sanitation teams are digging additional latrines, purifying water sources, distributing family hygiene kits and launching health and hygiene promotion campaigns.
“We have also started to clean garbage ditches and drain waste water away from the camp sites, says IRC emergency health coordinator, Christophe Nouvet.
In the Tanabasir warehouse camp, the evening is almost upon us and the call for prayer, echoing from the local mosque, mixes with the noise of coughing and children’s crying.
An elderly woman, dressed in a long white prayer shawl, prepares for the ritual.
“I pray to God that we can return to our homes soon,” she says. “And I pray for the many dead souls that were lost in Aceh.”
