TY - JOUR T1 - After the wave: bringing emergency medical care to Aceh JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 236 LP - 237 VL - 55 IS - 512 AU - Morten Rostrup Y1 - 2005/03/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/55/512/236.abstract N2 - When I first arrived in Meulaboh, a city on the west coast of Aceh, Sumatra, I went down to see the harbour. It was completely devastated, and although most of the corpses had been removed, the smell of dead bodies still filled the air. There were not many people around, but some were still sorting through the muddy debris, trying to salvage belongings. Although I didn't witness the actual moment when the tsunami hit, I caught a glimpse of the huge physical devastation in the words and minds of the people I met and patients I treated.Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was the first international organisation to begin providing medical care in Aceh. The province, at the tip of Sumatra, has long been off-limits to outsiders due to a long and brutal violent struggle between the Acehnese separatist movement know as ‘GAM’ and the Indonesian military.The first team of eight MSF volunteers arrived in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, on the 28 December and started setting up mobile medical clinics. I arrived the following week. By the end of the month, there were more than 250 MSF staff working in the province, giving an average of 4000 consultations each week in more than 30 different locations; running measles vaccination campaigns; providing individual and group psychosocial support; working in several hospitals; and setting up an epidemiological surveillance system. MSF was using six helicopters, several chartered planes, a fleet of cars, a barge and a battery of fishing boats to transport staff, medical supplies, food and a wide range of relief goods around the region.MSF relief worker in Meulaboh, Aceh, January 2005.Despite the intense relief effort, the experience was fairly disheartening for some medical volunteers. In a catastrophe as massive as this tsunami, … ER -