The Indonesian medical team poses at Yangon Airport before their return home last week. Pic: Hein Latt Aung

A TEAM of 30 medical specialists from Indonesia returned home on Thursday after spending three weeks providing health services to victims of cyclone Nargis in Kawhmu township in Yangon Division.

The team had arrived in Myanmar on June 2 along with 7 tons of medical supplies brought by Indonesian Air Force aircraft. The specialists spent 17 days providing healthcare for cyclone victims from a clinic in Kawhmu, which featured a 24-hour emergency room with doctors on stand-by for urgent cases.
Team leader Dr Munar Lubis said that common problems among patients included skin complaints, hypertension and diarrhoea.

He said that about 60 percent of the people who came were internal medicine patients with musculoskeletal, hyper-tension, pulmonary (including tuberculosis), dermatological or psychosomatic ailments.

“We provided medical treatment to about 600 patients a day at the clinic, including some surgical procedures, including hernia, lymphoma, hidrocel, hysterectomy and labioschisis surgeries,” he said.

But Dr Lubis said the biggest challenge in providing care was the language barrier.

“We had to communicate with patients using gestures. They used their hands and head to let us know what was wrong but sometimes we couldn’t understand in detail what the complaint was until a translator came,” he said.

Dr Lubis said patients who required close observation were treated in the emergency room, which had an electrocardiogram machine and other equipment. Cases requiring hospitalisation were referred to the township hospital for further treatment.

“We also had a psychiatrist on our medical team and we found more than 100 cases of psychological trauma caused by the cyclone, including palpitations, insomnia, nightmares, panic attacks, fatigue and inability to work,” he said, adding that most of these patients were treated with drugs.

He said that many of the people treated by the team were sad to see them go.

“Our patients thanked us for our help and some of them wept when we returned to Yangon at the end of the project. Some offered us generous gifts and even brought chickens for us,” Dr Lubis said.