Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation

Article Index
Tzu Chi Medical Teams to Sri Lanka
Multiple roles of doctors and nurses
Training local medical volunteers
All Pages

 
Training local medical volunteers
Before the first medical team returned to Taiwan, the second team, composed of Tzu Chi members from Singapore and Malaysia, arrived to take over. The third team arrived from Taiwan on January 11. They too provided fixed-location free clinics and handed out 500 family-size medical kits.

Dr. Lin Shinn-zong, superintendent of the Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center and the leader of the third medical team, estimated that since there was a limited number of medical kits and most people couldn't read the instructions in either English or Chinese, the best recipients would be people with a higher education, who could understand English. These people would then teach others how to use the kits properly and avoid the danger of misusing the drugs. Therefore, most of the medical kits were given to teachers.

Hambantota School, which was located right next to the Tzu Chi medical station, had 2,000 elementary and secondary students, of which 150 students, along with three teachers, were killed in the tsunami. Some of the surviving students would study at school in the morning and then volunteer at the Tzu Chi station in the afternoon.

On the morning of January 17, Dr. Lin, Ms. Huang Hsing-chao, director of administration at Yuli Tzu Chi Hospital, and Tzu Chi volunteer Lu Fang-chuan delivered the medical kits to the school. They first instructed K.S. Dilrukshi, a computer science teacher, how to correctly use the thermometer and the eight kinds of medicine contained in the kit before gathering all of the other teachers together in a classroom. Dr. Lin gave each one of the teachers a medical kit and, with the help of Dilrukshi's interpretation, explained to each of them how to use the medicines correctly.

Dr. Lin opened his mouth, bent his back, and demonstrated how to use the medicines for head-ache, sore throat, backache, cough, and other sicknesses. The combination of his explanations and body language allowed the teachers to master the kits very quickly. Dr. Lin even gave them a small test afterwards to test their knowledge, and all of them provided the right answers.

In the month between the end of 2004, when the first medical team arrived, and January 24, when the fifth medical team arrived, 85 medical professionals helped over 10,000 Sri Lankan people. Until local medical services return to normal, Tzu Chi will continue to provide its love and service in this stricken country.

By Huang Hsiu-hua
Translated by Lin Sen-shou
Source: Tzu Chi Quarterly Spring 2005