Photo: Menno Wiebe/CWS

New York/Banda Aceh – “Don’t lose sight of the tsunami survivors now,” urges the head of international humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS).

As some larger humanitarian agencies report they are winding down their focus and fundraising for emergency response phases to December’s tsunami disaster, CWS Executive Director Rev. John L. McCullough says, “The work that spells real disaster recovery is just beginning.”

McCullough is visiting Indonesia’s worst hit Aceh province this week to further shape the agency’s regional long-term recovery programs. He warns, “This is the stage when everyone’s attention tends to turn to other emergencies. It’s the stage,” he says, “when governments tend to forget their pledges.”

‘We’ll have to multi-task’

“There’s no question that we have to continue to focus on the rest of the world’s suffering in places like Darfur and Haiti,” McCullough says. “But we can’t afford to turn away from the Indian Ocean and perpetuate the agony of human survival there. We’ll all just have to multi-task,” he says.

Church World Service is now working with staff and partners on the ground to develop program plans for the region’s long-term recovery needs, even while its teams in Indonesia and Sri Lanka are continuing to deliver immediate emergency aid, food, medical care, and shelter supplies. One of the most imminent tasks in Indonesia’s Aceh province, says McCullough, “is the need for urgent psychosocial or mental health intervention.”

Complex trauma calling for ‘holistic, community based supports’

“The trauma in such devastated areas as Aceh,” he says, “has been complex and all-encompassing. It has integrally affected individuals, families, communities, economies, livelihoods, food security, societal supports, and physical environment.

“The approach, therefore,” says Maurice Bloem, Country Director for CWS Indonesia, “must take place over time and calls for a more holistic, community-based solution to trauma recovery.”

The World Health Organization reports that up to 10 percent of those who survived the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh province could experience serious psychiatric events, such as depression or adjustment disorders, and as many as 50 percent of the survivors could develop less severe psychological reactions.

Bloem says the CWS’s Indonesian medical and mental health teams have been traveling Aceh province with their mobile clinic, offering immediate person-to-person counseling and group counseling, establishing community-based support groups, and planning training for ongoing help.

Foreign psychologists may not be helpful for direct trauma care, says Indonesian clinician

Dr. Julia Suryantan, CWS Indonesia’s Senior Program Officer for Health and Nutrition says foreign psychologists may not be contributing much in immediate trauma care in Aceh, “because of language limitations.” She says foreign clinicians may be helpful in transferring knowledge and building local capacity, “but not as direct implementers.”

Working in partnership in Indonesia for some 40 years, and with offices in Banda Aceh and Meulobah as well as Jakarta, CWS Indonesia has experience in managing mental health and trauma programs in the violence-torn country.

Its local staff was able to begin emergency response in Banda Aceh on December 29, and quickly prepared logistics for a CWS medical team.

The CWS Indonesian medical team is providing medical services in mosques or small praying halls or musholahs, and travels with a local volunteer translator who speaks Acehnese. “People under heavy depression and stress,” says Suryantan, “are more comfortable to speak with their own people, using their mother tongue.”

Water and sanitation projects underway in Meulobah, Rantau Panjang

In Meulobah, Aceh’s second largest city, and in Rantau Panjang village, Aceh Barat district, CWS is now installing a water treatment and sanitation project. Once installed, the water purification units—donated by the Norwegian government through CWS partner Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) – will produce enough clean water for approximately 50,000 persons per day.

In Banda Aceh, CWS and local partner Mamamia distributed relief assistance to nearly 6,000 displaced people living with host families and has so far distributed food packages, bottled water, family shelter kits, blankets, health kits, mosquito nets, and other essentials. A new shipment of IMA Medicine Boxes, blankets, family tents and biscuits is due to be distributed this week, and 42,000 packaged rice and soy meals will be distributed under close supervision by a nutrition specialist.

CWS Sri Lanka: ‘2 to 3 years of reconstruction programs’

Concurrently, in Sri Lanka, aid workers from CWS’s Afghanistand/Pakistan regional office continue to deliver immediate emergency aid to worst-hit areas and are looking at at least two to three years of reconstruction programs. CWS says some reconstruction projects have already begun, working in conjunction with the Sri Lankan government and other local partners.

Aid agencies now responding to emergencies in ‘complex environments’

“Ethnic tensions, civil war, natural disasters--these are not ‘straight-forward’ disasters any more,” noted CWS Afghanistan/Pakistan Director Marvin Parvez, who was in New York last Friday (Jan. 28). Parvez said humanitarian agencies like CWS are having to respond in increasingly complex environments.

“Responding to emergencies is about speed,” Parvez said, “but it’s also about being sensitive to local realities.”

Church World Service director McCullough says he intentionally waited till now to tour Aceh. “The situation was so catastrophic, we wanted to give all the space possible for international workers to be able to do what they were there for. Now, we can take a deeper look at what we most need to do to help the survivors and their communities rebuild their future.”

The agency is continuing its fundraising campaign to support long-term recovery programs in worst-hit and least served-tsunami disaster areas.

The agency has to date delivered more than $3.5 million in emergency aid to the region.