WTN Update: Sri Lanka Medical Aid August 9th 2005 from Andy Barrs, the charity’s co-founder.

Through one of our colleagues (a doctor who also happened to be out in Sri Lanka on December 26th) approximately £10,000 of medical supplies has been collected. While some of the medical drugs were taken out and distributed during the scoping trip in January, the hospital and treatment centers were found to be well stocked, and so we will be sending out most of the supplies collected later this year and early in 2006.

The Healing Journey

The longer term negative impact of the Tsunami on physical and emotional health of local people remains the major unmet health need. These include in particular: Post-traumatic stress disorder and related psychological illnesses

1. Nutritional deficiencies among mothers who were pregnant and ingested large quantities of sea water, and Failure-to-Thrive among some children born since the tsunami.

2. Orthopaedic and physiotherapy treatments and support required for chronic physical injuries.

‘The Healing Journey’ is the name that has been given to our project that aims to help meet these health needs. Since January we have:

1. Supported financially 2 professionally qualified ‘traumatic stress’ specialists to provide treatments and training for local people

2. Help to rebuild The Mahabala Ayurvedic Centre in Galle that was completely destroyed by the Tsunami and this is now operating again (see picture above).

Further opportunities to assist mother and child health projects and the provision of treatments for chronic physical injuries have been identified and will be supported later this year.

Because these health needs are long-term, it is our intention to sustain the project for 3 years.