Tragic Irony
My friends in Thailand are both safe. Paula, the Columbian, was in the north of the country so was unaffected, while Jenevieve was on an island near Phuket and said she's ok, "but it was close."
My heart goes out to those who have lost everything, and everyone. I'm feeling a different sort of helplessness than I did exactly a year ago today after the earthquake in Bam, Iran. As opposed to last year when I was half a world away in Canada and largely unacquainted with the medical and psychological needs of victims of such disasters, this year I'm much closer to the scene of devastation - and actually working with an organization that helps treat and rehabilitate victims of natural and man-made disasters - but still can only read the realms of articles and personal accounts of death, disease and narrow escapes online as if I were still on the other side of the planet. I feel as though there's something more I should be doing and that I'm close enough to do it...but still so far away.
My single entry visa prevents me from leaving the country, and my organization doesn't have the financial resources to send a team of psychologists and counselors to India or Sri Lanka to help people cope with their losses, even though they're trained and would be willing to do so. Moreover, I've been constantly reminded of the necessity of such assistance by the article written by one of our clinical psychologists on 'Disaster Mental Health', which we spent most of yesterday afternoon working on for publication in this month's issue of our health and human rights newsletter, Article 14. The feature article's publication is both timely and tragically ironic: though it was originally supposed to be published in the last issue and has therefore been under close scrutiny for more than a month, it will now look as though it was written only this week and specifically because of this natural disaster of enormous proportions.
Perhaps the only thing I can do at this point is to encourage anyone with the resources to do so to make a donation to their national branch of the Red Cross. Beyond that, I can only hope that the death toll won't climb much higher than the 50, 000 mark that it just reached, but the sinking feeling in my gut tells me that this is far too unrealistic a hope to hold on to.
My heart goes out to those who have lost everything, and everyone. I'm feeling a different sort of helplessness than I did exactly a year ago today after the earthquake in Bam, Iran. As opposed to last year when I was half a world away in Canada and largely unacquainted with the medical and psychological needs of victims of such disasters, this year I'm much closer to the scene of devastation - and actually working with an organization that helps treat and rehabilitate victims of natural and man-made disasters - but still can only read the realms of articles and personal accounts of death, disease and narrow escapes online as if I were still on the other side of the planet. I feel as though there's something more I should be doing and that I'm close enough to do it...but still so far away.
My single entry visa prevents me from leaving the country, and my organization doesn't have the financial resources to send a team of psychologists and counselors to India or Sri Lanka to help people cope with their losses, even though they're trained and would be willing to do so. Moreover, I've been constantly reminded of the necessity of such assistance by the article written by one of our clinical psychologists on 'Disaster Mental Health', which we spent most of yesterday afternoon working on for publication in this month's issue of our health and human rights newsletter, Article 14. The feature article's publication is both timely and tragically ironic: though it was originally supposed to be published in the last issue and has therefore been under close scrutiny for more than a month, it will now look as though it was written only this week and specifically because of this natural disaster of enormous proportions.
Perhaps the only thing I can do at this point is to encourage anyone with the resources to do so to make a donation to their national branch of the Red Cross. Beyond that, I can only hope that the death toll won't climb much higher than the 50, 000 mark that it just reached, but the sinking feeling in my gut tells me that this is far too unrealistic a hope to hold on to.
posted by Per at 10:35 a.m.
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