International Physician Update

Tsunami Relief Efforts

The Johns Hopkins community joins the world in its concern over the devastation suffered by the people in the regions affected by the Tsunami and in its commitment to aid survivors, both as individuals and as members of relief teams.

As of this printing, several Johns Hopkins medical teams have arrived in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Among them are faculty of the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies, which is coordinating its efforts through the International Rescue Committee in Indonesia to provide direct medical relief to disaster victims, helping to establish a surveillance system to monitor infectious disease and injuries resulting from the disaster, and assisting in public health assessments.

Another group of physicians of Sri Lankan descent from the Departments of Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine has left for Sri Lanka as part of an International Medical Health Organization team. They will provide much- needed drugs and medical supplies and are supported here at Hopkins by additional faculty and administrators. Faculty, alumni and students of the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health who were in the countries swept by the tsunami are doing their utmost to aid the survivors and protect health.

As Alfred Sommer, dean of the School of Public Health, learned firsthand 30 years ago in Bangladesh, the greatest immediate needs in this kind of disaster are water, food and shelter, and direct contributions to relief organizations on the ground are most helpful in the immediate aftermath. To this end, Johns Hopkins leadership has encouraged all members of the Hopkins community to donate by providing a list of bona fide relief organizations that provide such assistance.
 
All of us at Johns Hopkins will continue to support our colleagues and friends in South Asia in these and other ways in the coming weeks and months.