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The road to recovery
| One week after the earthquake that devastated swathes of Indonesia’s Java island on 27 May, hundreds of thousands of residents are bracing themselves for the long process of recovery.
As the emergency phase of the humanitarian response begins to recede, aid workers are shifting focus to the vast challenges of helping a traumatised community get back on its feet. | | |  | |
| “She’s feeling much better today,” said Sarju, sitting at the bedside of his nine-year-old daughter Putri, who is receiving treatment at an Indonesian Red Cross hospital in Bantul, one of the worst affected quake-hit areas on the southern outskirts of Yogyakarta city.
Putri is one of at least 1,000 injured people who were treated at the hospital in the week following the quake. According to the latest government figures, 5,700 people were killed, and at least 16,000 were injured.
Red Cross workers say that while urgent medical needs remain, particularly in the form of supplies such as drugs, plaster casts and bandages, the challenge of providing shelter to those who have lost their homes is now a pressing priority.
From trauma to rehabilitation
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 | | | Like many of the injured, Putri suffered severe facial lacerations from falling rubble when the quake hit. She was given first aid by a local doctor and eventually evacuated to the 60-bed Red Cross hospital, which was shipped from tsunami affected areas of Aceh and set up within 48 hours of the catastrophe. | |
Hospitals in the area have made significant progress in reducing the numbers of patients awaiting treatment. Field hospitals such as the Red Cross facility, which has been supported by a team of medics and logisticians from the Norwegian Red Cross, are also reducing the pressure on government facilities.
“My daughter is recovering well and will be discharged next week, but our house was completely destroyed,” said Sarju. “We will need tents to live in and then I will ask the authorities for help to rebuild my house.”
Red Cross health delegates are now looking at how to help replace medical supplies that have been used up in local hospitals. They are also assessing how best to support the Indonesian Ministry of Health in providing long-term rehabilitation for the injured, as well as effective treatment for those with secondary infections of their wounds. | |
| At the same time, however, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is now increasing its distributions of tents and other relief items such as tarpaulins, jerry cans, blankets, detergent and soap.
“The first week of the operation was very much focused on emergency evacuation and medical treatment,” said Mijanur Rahman, a Federation relief delegate, “But shelter and non-food items will become very much the priority in the second.”
Almost 3,000 tents have already been distributed in seven districts around Yogyakarta, providing shelter to some 15,000 people. But Rahman said that some 20,000 families – roughly 100,000 people – will have received tents and tarpaulins by the end of the second week.
Running the aid pipeline
At least 18 flights carrying hundreds of tonnes of relief supplies have landed in the affected area, mostly flying in from Medan in Sumatra, where disaster-preparedness stockpiles have been maintained since the tsunami.
The airlift has been coordinated since Tuesday by a logistics Emergency Response Unit (ERU) from the British Red Cross.
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| “It’s been a phenomenally busy week,” said the ERU team leader, Justin Cuckow, “and there’s a lot more to be done. We have an ambitious operation here but we’re confident that the resources and strategy are in place to deliver this assistance where it’s most needed.”
Yet for all the sophistication of a large-scale international aid operation, the backbone of the humanitarian response to the quake continues to be provided by the army of volunteers of the Indonesian Red Cross, known as Palang Merah Indonesia (PMI). | | |  | |
| Some 500 unpaid PMI workers began dispensing aid within two hours of the quake, and every day they are still hard at work, loading trucks and delivering relief goods.
“I try to imagine what it must be like for the people who lost relatives in this disaster and it makes me feel very sad,” said Umi Alfiah, a 21-year-old student who has been a PMI volunteer since 2003. “But this is my job, it is part of my soul.”
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