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Australian tsunami medical team return home

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PM - Friday, 21 January , 2005  17:34:43

Reporter: Nance Haxton

TANYA NOLAN: The first Australian medical team to be sent to Banda Aceh after the tsunami disaster today returned home to Adelaide.

The team of 26 doctors, nurses, paramedics and a fireman returned after two weeks treating those most seriously wounded by the tsunami, which devastated the region on Boxing Day.

They worked under conditions unimaginable at home, with no running water, and only basic medical equipment.

State Premier Mike Rann welcomed the surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and emergency experts on their return to Adelaide Airport today.

Nance Haxton was there and filed this report.

MIKE RANN: Welcome home.

NANCE HAXTON: The smile on the face of team leader Hugh Grantham as he was greeted by the Premier Mike Rann in the airport lounge said it all - a combination of relief at being home and of satisfaction at what was achieved.

HUGH GRANTHAM: I've seen our team scrounge, improvise … they have made spaces from water bottles, drip stands from bits of cord. When we got there we found the ward full of people with pain on their faces, but not looking us in the eye, just lying very still. It stank. When we left they had smiles and tears in their eyes as we were going. That was nice.

NANCE HAXTON: The South Australian medical team was central to re-establishing a 100-bed surgical and medical hospital in Banda Aceh, which had been a private hospital prior to the tsunami. Mr Grantham says it is an enormous logistical challenge to run a hospital in such primitive conditions and with so many different nationalities.

HUGH GRANTHAM: We were running with six nations in the hospital, trying to work together to make a unit of a hospital, saving lives that were otherwise dying. Pulling tetanises that were going to die out, horrible pneumonias. When we got chest x-rays working we were seeing chest x-rays that were absolutely breathtaking by today's standards. I mean you'd have said why isn't this person in ICU if you'd seen anything like that.

NANCE HAXTON: Dr Peter Riddell is a plastic reconstructive surgeon at the Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide. His son Stuart jumped into his arms when he walked through the arrivals gate, and was quick to explain to reporters what his father was doing in Banda Aceh.

STUART RIDDELL: Yes, he's been working all the people with the different diseases, with the different water borne diseases.

NANCE HAXTON: Dr Riddell says while he is proud of the work achieved by the medical team, it will take time to recover from what he has seen.

PETER RIDDELL: It's gross devastation, and a lot of very badly displaced people. And I suppose one of the things that was really interesting was that if you look at the survivors, it was their relative lack of children, and the lack of women. Obviously they didn't survive the sort of big wave that came.

NANCE HAXTON: As a reconstructive surgeon, were you shocked by some of the injuries that you saw?

PETER RIDDELL: Well, as I said, I've seen them before, but the circumstances were different, and we were operating under I guess less than ideal conditions, so it's always very difficult.

NANCE HAXTON: So good to be back and have your son in your arms again?

PETER RIDDELL: Very good, very good.

NANCE HAXTON: Trauma theatre nurse Catherine Patrick says while her surgical experience at Royal Adelaide Hospital was invaluable for the volunteer work she performed, nothing could prepare her for the devastation she saw.

CATHERINE PATRICK: For me it was working with patients that you knew had lost everyone. They had no one, and a lot of them didn't have a home to go to. And that was one of the problems that we faced. We operated on these patients and they got better, but where were they going to go after their discharge from hospital?

TANYA NOLAN: Trauma theatre nurse Catherine Patrick on her return from Banda Aceh.
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