Here again, we got a lot of donations of medicines from many sources.  But this was very tricky because we had to check expiry on each medicine and we had to throw away a lot of medicines that were old or useless.  We also had to buy a lot of the medicines that we could not get donations of and that were in great demand.  We sometimes wished we had a better network of medicine suppliers and doctors – maybe things could have been organized more smoothly.  Similarly we initially had a lot of problems organizing vans for the medical teams.  HCL helped us with many of the vans for the medical camps. We felt (and feel) that an experience of running a mobile health van would have been very useful. 

Minoo Shroff visited us about a month after the Tsunami struck and saw the work going on.  He and his friend have together raised funds to help us start a Mobile Health Van Program – we hope to soon have a network of doctors and medical professionals helping us with regular medical camps and awareness sessions in the Tsunami areas which can also be used later during emergencies.

Psychological Counseling

There was a lot of need for counseling people who had lost family members, houses and livelihood assets.  We organized counseling through different means – individual and group counseling sessions, trust building activities for children and youth, Tsunami Science books and videos, cultural activities like Street Theatre (Kala Jathas).

Group and Individual Counseling Sessions

We had a number of professional counselors who met people and counseled them individually and in groups. They also trained our volunteers in counseling techniques.  The most effective counseling just turned out to be the ones where people found someone sympathetic they could talk to.  Many western counseling techniques were rejected both by the people and by many of the volunteers as impractical.  But some of the techniques were found very useful. Medicines Sans Frontiers organized some very good and intensive counseling with systematic follow up in Nagai and Cuddalore. 

Several of our volunteers visited each village immediately after the Tsunami and organized group counseling sessions with women and children. This was very effective. It allowed women and children to speak up and describe their fears and what happened. This also allowed them to see that they were not alone and that there were others who were in worse situations.