Cyclone victims get T.O. aid

Saudkhali, BANGLADESH - In the days and hours leading up to Cyclone Sidr's landfall, thousands of volunteers were mobilized to warn poor farmers, fishermen, and their families. They beat drums, used megaphones, and hiked through isolated villages urging the masses to seek refuge from the fast approaching storm in government built cyclone shelters. Thousands heeded the warnings.

But when they emerged from the shelters, they soon found that they had lost almost everything.

Many didn't hear the warning and went about their normal lives.

Fisherman went to sea, farmers worked the land, children continued to play.

Cyclone Sidr made landfall as a vicious Category 4 storm. It moved inland at a slow, punishing pace.

End to end the storm surge lasted over 5 hours and the peak of the storm lasted over an hour. Hundreds of thousands of people sought shelter in their tiny huts made of wooden frames strapped together under a thatch roof. They were no match for the fury of Sidr.

In its wake, Sidr affected over 8.5 million people leaving 4,000 dead (a number that is expected to rise), over 40,000 injured and over 2.6 million homeless. Bodies were strewn throughout the countryside and into local rivers and streams. Thousands of cattle were killed and thousands of acres of crops destroyed.

As the world's humanitarian teams mobilized, Toronto-based Global Medic sprung to action and deployed its Rapid Response Team along with an inflatable field hospital, 24 water purification systems, 2.8 million water purification tablets, and more than a million tablets of essential medicines to treat at least 20,000 patients.

Global Medic is a Canadian charity that responds to large-scale catastrophes around the world using professional paramedics, police officers and firefighters who volunteer their time and skills.

The journey to affected zone was as arduous one. After spending 36 hours in the air, the four-member team arrived in Dhaka, cleared customs, collected its gear and started the 12-hour-long journey south. Halfway down the storm damage was clearly visible.

Trees were windswept and fallen - debris strewn everywhere. Sections of the road were washed out and heavily damaged in other areas.

A large number of the displaced were setting up makeshift shelters at the side of the road. They strung together pieces of wood and used saris as a roof. The lucky ones had found a tarpaulin or plastic rice bag for shelter.

Their new homes are so tiny. The average size is only about 4 by 5 feet.

Children play at the side road. They dart across traffic. Chickens peck at grains in the makeshift shelters. Large trucks filled with used clothes ramble down these roads. People throw clothes off the back to the masses below. It is an indignant form of aid delivery. Traffic moves at a snail's pace. Tensions mount.

The displaced have come to the side of the road because aid is not reaching them. Their villages are centuries old, isolated and inaccessible by road.

The road represents life to them. Tragically, it also represents death. We watch in horror as a small child darts out into traffic and is struck by a motorcycle carrying three men. The child is pulled under the wheels and dragged for twenty feet.

The medics on our team try to help the child as we bandage him and send him off to a local hospital. The contrast of our worlds is brought home to me. As a city medic, I would be one of several rescuers responding to help save his life. In the city, when a child is hurt we pull out all the stops to help. The fire and police departments would fly to the scene. The medics would rush the closest ambulance. The medics would stabilize the kid and rush him to the pediatric trauma centre at Sick Kids while half the cops in the city would clear off their calls to shut down traffic and create a lane for the ambulance.

That doesn't happen in southern Bangladesh. This poor child is bandaged and placed on the back of a flat box being pulled by a bicycle. There are no trauma centres here.

As a team, we must carry on. There are still many who need our help. We continue our harrowing journey to a point where the road is completely washed away. It takes us an hour to travel the next 10 km to the village of Saudkhali. The road ends here at a bridge. Everything to the south of us is destroyed. We set up a base of operations at a local school. The playground becomes the site of our inflatable field hospital.

The hospital treats an average of 830 patients a day. One in four patients is being seen for some type of trauma. We are the first team that has set up in this region. It is the first time that many people are able to access primary health care since the storm. We see all types of patients: cuts, bruises, broken bones, impaled objects, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, dysentery, febrile outbreaks, skin rashes, fungals and sheer fatigue. Ten percent of our patients need some form of invasive therapy from sutures to draining cysts or minor surgeries.

Bonnie Stewart is an East Coast girl living in Kingston where she has worked as a medic for the past seven years.

Her days are spent doing wound care in the hospital. Days of cleaning, debriding, dressing and sanitizing. At night the hospital beds are used by our team members to catch much needed down time. She works feverishly to treat a six-year-old boy who has been carried to the hospital by his father. A tree pushed over by Sidr collapsed and a large branch struck the boy and pinned his leg. He has a badly broken left femur. Barely conscious, incoherent, heart racing and blood pressure in his boots, Stewart struggles to rehydrate him and immobilize the leg. A vehicle carrying a dignitary heading to Dhaka is flagged down. The child and his family is placed in the back seat and one of doctors carries him to a larger hospital in an effort to save his life and leg.

A pond borders the school. Our team has set up a large scale Nomad water purification unit, capable of purifying 100 litres a minute. The water team purifies thousands of litres of clean drinking water daily. Trucks carrying water tanks are filled and sent to isolated areas to get people clean water. Villagers line up to fill their water jugs. Those without jugs are given jerry cans filled with this precious gift of life. The team starts to install portable water purification systems in isolated communities or designated safe areas for children so we can ensure they have clean drinking water. These portable Trekker systems can sustain over a thousand people daily and run off solar power, a car battery or a motorcycle battery.

Matt Capobianco is a street-wise, smart-mouthed kid from Rexdale. He worked as a social worker helping at-risk inner-city youth before volunteering with Global Medic. Now, on his fourth deployment, he is a leading a race against time to save thousands through a coordinated distribution effort. Capobianco's job is to ramp up distribution so we can help more people in need. Hundreds of thousands of people are south of our location in desperate need of help.

Daily, we charter small fishing boats made of rickety planks and load them with food, water, and blankets. Volunteers accompany the boats and distribute aid to the isolated. Tragically, they float down the rivers passing dozens of bodies. In this race, you can't stop to bury the dead. You have to focus on the living.

Everyday, the operation grows. The medical unit expands beyond the hospital and sends out two-man teams to treat those who cannot reach us. Safe water keeps reaching kids as more portable systems are installed. As my team installs a remote system, we are approached by the military. They are out in force. Two helicopters land and from one of them emerges a group of dignitaries. One of them addresses a crowd of the displaced civilians and reporters and tours the area on foot.

Curiously, he stops in to see what we are doing. I explain and offer him a glass of water. He accepts, drinks the water and shakes my hand. I have no idea that he was the president of Bangladesh's caretaker government.

Federal MP Jim Karygiannis advised us that he was coming to see the affected zone in an effort to raise more awareness to the plight of the people. In an effort to save shipping costs, Karygiannis was kind enough to carry on four chainsaws donated by Stihl. Those chainsaws are blazing a clearing path around our camp as clean up teams remove downed trees to open up access roads and allow the rebuilding to start.

Our Bangladesh operation is working. On any given day over 800 patients receive free medical care, 50,000 people get clean drinking water, 3,450 families have received food kits containing over 35,000 kg of food, 4,000 blankets get distributed, and 3,000 people received clothing or kitchen kits in a coordinated effort. The program is so efficient that 1 litre of clean drinking water costs .7 cents to purify and the average cost of patient care is $ 2.27 - including the medication.

Capobianco and Stewart head seven hours east of our site to Patuakhali, a heavily damaged region in dire need of help. A new inflatable hospital is on its way to service more than 1,500 patients a day. A group of workers from Grand Bank, Nfld., have worked around the clock to build this new hospital. Soon more medicines and medics will arrive and water units will be in place. Our team will be able to double the number of people we can help daily to more than 100,000.

It takes a special kind of person to volunteer with Global Medic. These front line rescuers leave behind the creature comforts of home. They leave behind family members and loved ones. They miss birthdays and holidays. They work in difficult situations to help people they have never met. They work long hours with very little sleep and often in unsanitary conditions.

The number of disasters in the world is increasing. Global Medic teams have deployed over 30 times in the last four years. Bangladesh was the 11th deployment of 2007. When it feels like that world is crumbling around us, many will mourn. Many more will pray. Others will simply ask why. But the men and women of Global Medic, they will answer the call and be on the front line to provide hope.

-- Rahul Singh is a Toronto paramedic and director of the volunteer charity organization Global Medic