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Trauma on the rise among tsunami survivors

SAINTHAMARUTHU: The harsh reality of their losses is starting to strike Sri Lankan tsunami survivors, who are increasingly showing symptoms of hypertension and mental trauma, medics in a ravaged village said Tuesday.

Many people battled just to stay alive and to try to find missing family members in the immediate aftermath of the December 26 disaster. But more than a week later the full enormity of the destruction and loss is beginning to sink in, said Yamashita Tomoko, senior doctor in the 20-member team of Japanese medical volunteers.

“In the last few days they have been going back to their houses and on seeing the destruction they are completely broken,” Tomoko told AFP. “They have lost everything that they had built all these year - their house, family members ... everything. These hard realities are now hitting them.” Sainthamaruthu, a largely Muslim fishing village near Kalmunai town in Ampara district, was one of the worst affected in the catastrophe with relief workers claiming that nearly 3,500 villagers were swallowed when the sea turned ferocious on tsunami Sunday.

More than 8,000 of the 30,000 deaths recorded in the island occurred in Ampara district, according to official figures. The near-destruction of the village and massive loss of life was causing psychological depression as well as ailments such as diabetes and hypertension, Tomoko said.

“In the last two days the number of patients suffering from these ailments has significantly grown. I have treated dozens,” she said, adding that the key reason for the rise in trauma-related problems was the patient’s inability to come to terms with the enormous losses.

As she was speaking, a villager suffering hypertension arrived at the makeshift clinic in Sainthamaruthu, accompanied by his wife. “Some journalists came yesterday (Monday) and took me to see the devastation in our area,” said 36-year-old Adam Bava.

“Seeing the destruction of my own house I just collapsed and since then I have not been able to think properly. How I am going to rebuild my family’s life again is what horrifies me.” Tomoko said the number of patients like Bava was increasing but that the drugs to treat them were not easily available due to bad weather conditions hampering the arrival of supplies.

“I have no drugs to treat diabetes and mental depressions at all in my clinic and the pharmacists in the town also have inadequate stocks,” she said. afp

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