SurfAid

When not busy with his Port Macquarie practice, Dr Ben Gordon catches waves along the New South Wales mid-north coast. Recently, as a member of a small band of dedicated surfers, most of them doctors, he played a vital role in the survival of isolated communities in tsunami-stricken Indonesia.

It was the knowledge and dedication of SurfAid International - a loose-knit but highly organised band of Australian and New Zealand wave-chasers - that was to prove an important element in Australia's speedy delivery of emergency relief to Aceh and northern Sumatra.

A medical-based non-government organisation (NGO) with a track record of disease prevention in Indonesia, SurfAid was funded by AusAID to combat the threat of disease among thousands of displaced people on the island of Simeulue.

Dr Gordon with fellow SurfAid workers conducting immunisations
Photo: Rob Walker

Just off the coast of Aceh, Simeulue was the closest landmass to the severe earthquake that triggered the disaster of 26 December.

At the village of Ujung Salang, only 60 km from the earthquake's epicentre, an AusAID assessment team found that, miraculously, the entire population of 500 had survived the tsunami. Ujung Salang's story was typical of villages along the hardest-hit northwest coast of Simeulue. A tradition of oral history ensured that the harsh lesson learned from a tsunami event in 1907 had been passed down, generation to generation: when there's an earthquake, run to high ground.

But while lives had been spared, an estimated 22,000 had been left homeless and without adequate food or clean water. The AusAID team, deeply concerned about the twin threats of starvation and disease, was quick to identify SurfAid -with its deep local knowledge, language skills and core competencies in prevention and control of communicable diseases - as the ideal partner to deliver the medical services necessary to head off further tragedy.

Dr Gordon led the SurfAID team to Simeulue. Finding patients for the emergency clinics was no problem, even in unaffected areas. When they trekked three kms inland to Alung, which escaped the tsunami, 291 people, mainly children and infants, were treated, about half the village's population. The next day, in Ujung Salang, which was destroyed, another 200 villagers attended the clinic.

As each patient was checked, treated or immunized, a nurse from the district Puskesmas (clinic) was on hand to note cases that would require follow-up treatment. Communication between the Port Macquarie doctor and his patents was not a problem. While Dr Gordon has basic Indonesian, fellow SurfAid workers, Australians Kristen Stokes and Tom Plummer, both Indonesian language scholars, took turns to interpret.

Their survival assured by AusAID's speedy intervention and the medical skills of SurfAid, the people of Ujung Salang now face their next challenge - to rebuild their village, but this time a short distance inland, beyond the reach of a future tsunami.

2005