Operation Sumatra Assist: Surgery for Survivors of the Tsunami Disaster in Indonesia

Abstract

The tsunami of 26 December 2004 was one of the deadliest natural disasters recorded, with the Indonesian province of Aceh being the most devastated region. As part of the Australian Government's response to the disaster, the Australian Defence Force deployed personnel from the Sydney-based 1st Health Support Battalion to Banda Aceh, the capital of the province. This unit joined with medical personnel from the New Zealand Defence Force to form the ANZAC field hospital. The mission of this unit as part of Operation Sumatra Assist was to provide medical and surgical care to the people of Aceh during the critical stages of rebuilding of the tsunami-devastated region. Surgical teams of the ANZAC field hospital were some of the first to provide definitive surgical care to the critically injured survivors of the disaster. During the first 4 weeks of the deployment, 173 surgical procedures were carried out for 71 patients in this facility. Thirty patients underwent 119 procedures (69% of total) for injuries sustained in the tsunami. Most of these patients required debridements, dressing changes and wound management procedures for the management of severe soft tissue infections. Three amputations were carried out. The remaining 41 patients underwent 54 procedures (31%) for emergent surgical conditions unrelated to the disaster.

Surgical workload of a foreign medical team after Typhoon Haiyan

“…Categorizing procedures as plastics, orthopaedics or general surgery was avoided as the demarcation of clinical responsibility and experience varies between different hospitals and surgeons. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Eighty-seven (69.7%) patients sought treatment for an injury directly attributable to the typhoon.…”

Australasian general surgical training and emergency medical teams: a review

“…The Australian Medical Assistance Team (AUSMAT) is the Australian Government's health emergency response capability and is coordinated by the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC) . The Australian Defence Force has also previously deployed military EMTs to SODs . EMTs may also be sent by non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), with prominent examples being Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross …”

Telecommunications in Israeli field hospitals deployed to three crisis zones

“…Foreign field hospitals can satisfy each of these needs (Abolghasemi et al, 2006;Chambers et al, 2006;Helminen, Saarela and Salmela, 2006;Riddez et al, 2006). The main task of a field hospital arriving later than three days after the precipitating event is to substitute the collapsed health care system (Von Schreeb et al, 2008).…”