NEWS UPDATE

ACEH, Indonesia, January 6, 2005 - Over the past days a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical team has been performing consultations in two displaced-persons camps in the town of Lamno.

In "Posko SMA 1 Jaya," a school that houses 2,286 displaced people from nine villages, the medical team saw 141 people on Tuesday afternoon. Wounds, respiratory tract infections, diarrhea, and skin diseases continue to be the most common ailments treated. In "Pasko Masjid Sabang," a mosque compound now home to 800 displaced people, MSF performed 61 consultations with similar pathologies.

Lamno was not destroyed by the tsunami due to its geographical location, but the surrounding villages were generally washed away, with death tolls per village of up to 80 percent. Most of the remaining people have fled to Lamno where the total number of displaced has reached more than 10,500.

With a lack of facilities, garbage, and overcrowded living spaces in the three schools where people have sought refuge, the sanitation situation in Lamno is particularly urgent. MSF will deliver water bladders, distribution ramps, sheeting, pumps, chlorine for water purification, and other materials for setting up water distribution points in the schools. The team will also build latrines.

Child wanders amid the destruction in Meulaboh. Photo © Francesco Zizola

Similarly, in Lam Teungoh the situation is also dire. Along a murky river, 1,200 displaced people live in any construction available. MSF will provide materials to purify water from wells or the river.

In Meulaboh, on the west coast, a team visited an 80-bed hospital, where a surgeon was working without a nurse to treat some 200 people with wounds. MSF sent a team of seven nurses to support the surgeon and the hospital. There are an estimated 35,000 people living in 35 displaced-persons camps. The surgical intervention in Sigli is also continuing.

© 2005 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)