Asha to help tsunami victims see brighter future

Medicine

Later this year, University of Adelaide medical student Asha Patel will travel to Sri Lanka to help families affected by the Boxing Day tsunami in December 2004. She writes for the Adelaidean about what she hopes to achieve.

In November and December this year, I will be one of 18 Australian medical students who will be working with Unite For Sight and Sri Lanka United Nations Friendship Organization (SUNFO), to provide eye care for the 24,580 families in the refugee camps in the tsunami-affected region of Galle, Sri Lanka.

The program has been organised by a number of passionate medical students and the Australian Medical Students' Association. It includes a five-day cultural and ophthalmology training course in Perth, followed by a month in Sri Lanka where we will be prescribing eye glasses, implementing education programs, screening for disease and bringing patients to an eye clinic for diagnosis and treatment.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, Eric Schwartz, visited Sri Lanka from September 2-6. He reported that eight months after the disaster, tens of thousands of tsunami survivors are living in basic shelters and shacks, with frustration on the rise.

As of August this year, some 800,000 people remain displaced in Sri Lanka by both the island's long-running civil war and the December 26, 2004 tsunami disaster. All these people require shelter, food, water, sanitation and healthcare. Having lost their homes and incomes, their health has suffered immensely.

Organisations such as SUNFO are working tirelessly to help treat and prevent many diseases, and we hope that our contribution to eye health will make a positive difference in the lives of the people in Galle; we know that even small changes can have a huge impact on people.

One of the key problems organisations like the Fred Hollows Foundation face is the lack of optometrists who can prescribe eyeglasses. This means the visiting ophthalmologists have to spend time doing these tasks, instead of performing more critical tasks such as cataract surgery.

Hopefully, our team can help Unite for Sight complete tasks, so that more experienced and qualified people can go ahead and better spend the time and resources they have. This way, even if we spend three weeks moving boxes of medical supplies, we will know we've helped make a difference.

At the same time, I do hope we won't just be moving boxes! Personally, I would love to learn about eye healthcare, but the chance to gain clinical experience is not my main motivation for going.

I want to get out of my usual life, out of my comfort zone, and test my limits.

I want to come home having learnt something about dealing with problems like losing personal space, homesickness and feeling out of my depth, so that I can be a better and more confident person and future doctor.

The long-term health needs of the community will definitely involve projects that are sustainable by community members, and in the few weeks that we are there, I hope we can help with training or planning these projects.

So far, preparations for the trip have been going well, and I have received a lot of support from my peers, and people in the community.

The University of Adelaide has always been a generous supporter of its students, and Vice-Chancellor Professor James McWha and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences Professor Justin Beilby have given me a generous grant to pay for airfares and medical equipment. Optometrists Mark Parsons and Kevin Rooney have also taken time from their busy North Terrace practice to show me how to use equipment and screen for diseases.

The latest official figures show that by the end of July, foreign donors have delivered less than half of $1 billion pledged for tsunami recovery. There is still such a long way to go, and I hope that we can come away from Sri Lanka feeling satisfied with our contribution. But I expect there will be times when we feel overwhelmed by the vastness of the tasks left to do.

I want our trip to help other Australians see that although there is a mountain to move, we can all lend a hand.