As MSF teams continue to come across totally unaided people in the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar (Burma), an immediate increase in emergency aid remains a necessity. However, addressing the mental and emotional trauma being suffered by victims of the cyclone is becoming increasingly vital.
Kai Mawi 24 and her daughter Danisa lost
their entire family to the cyclone.
Myanmar, May 2008.
Photo by Eyal Warshawski
The words of a woman who couldn't bring herself to eat provided a glimpse of the desolation that thousands of people are feeling as she thanked MSF staff for the food, but asked if they could provide her with the will to eat it. With generations wiped out, families torn apart and whole villages destroyed, the level of distress is extensive.
In June, MSF mental health expert Kaz De Jong travelled to the Delta to assess the situation. He describes what he saw. “When you approach a community you can see the level of loss mirrored in people’s faces and responses. Those who have been less affected, having undergone around a 20% loss - in itself unimaginable - are utilizing their natural coping mechanisms; they are active in coming together to care for each other and organize the community. However, those who live in areas that have been more heavily affected stare at you with empty faces, their natural coping mechanisms obliterated and their communities broken apart”.
MSF teams are seeing a growing number of psycho-social complaints such as lethargy, profound sadness, depression, anxiety and difficulty sleeping. In response, MSF are integrating a mental health element into the emergency response. “A team of community health workers will work to raise awareness of key issues such as stress and hygiene and the facilities put in place to assist people within the communities,” explains Kaz. “They will work together with our experienced health teams and counselors who will provide in-depth mental health support. The counselors are nationals who have been recruited from our longer standing MSF projects based in Myanmar”.
As people struggle to come to terms with the devastation around them; some too afraid to go home and face the horrors they witnessed only a month ago, it is vital that their needs, both physical and mental, are being met.