By DIDIER DIELS Special to the Daily Press
After the fall of dictator Suharto’s 32-year-old regime, political, ethnic and religious tensions erupted in 1999, spreading riots, guerrilla combat and roving mobs across the provinces of Indonesia. The emergency medical needs of the resulting victims and refugees brought the International Medical Corps (IMC).
By training locals not only to provide needed care — from immunizations to treating wounds to surgery — but to train their countrymen, Santa Monica-based IMC was able to build a healthcare network of nearly 100 local doctors, nurses and medics, and treat more than 25,000 patients.
When a terrorist attack at a Bali nightclub killed 202 people, that network allowed IMC within eight hours to have in place a medical team, surveying the damage and providing immediate relief. When the tsunami of Dec. 26 struck, killing more than 170,000 Indonesians by the latest estimate, IMC had a team in the remote Banda Aceh region within days.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 24, 2005. Read the original PDF.