The biggest regret of Good Samaritan Hospital’s tsunami team members – who returned safely Sunday from a remote village in Sri Lanka – was that they couldn’t make sure the good work they started would continue.


Two doctors and three nurses from the Puyallup hospital set up a rudimentary field hospital in the seaside village of Aliyavalai on the country’s northeast coast. The settlement is reached by dirt roads and has no running water, electricity or regular medical service.

The team ran the clinic for about a week and treated roughly 450 people during that time.

The team left its medical supplies behind and told locals how to use them. It also tried to get Sri Lankan doctors to visit.

But “unfortunately, there is no immediate follow-up at this point,” said Dr. Senthil Nadarajah. “This place needs more long term and permanent health system build-up.”

Nadarajah, 39, a critical care doctor, organized the effort with the help of Dr. Larry Woodard, an emergency room physician. Nurses Sally Haddow, Lora Pierson and David York also made the trip.

The group left Sea-Tac Airport Jan. 15 to help victims of the Dec. 26 tsunamis. Some 7,500 pounds of medical supplies were shipped, too.

A wall of water perhaps 30 feet high washed over Aliyavalai. About 900 people were killed. Thousands were left with no homes.

“Men were withdrawn. Women were depressed. At least half the population lost someone close,” said Woodard. “But people were pleased someone was there trying to help them.”

The team didn’t encounter cholera or any of the other diseases caused by sewage-tainted drinking water that public health officials worried about in the days after the disaster. But they witnessed the mental and physical damage the water itself caused.

Nadarajah, a Sri Lankan native, counseled a man who lost two daughters, two sons and his wife, to act like a Westerner and talk through his grief instead of keeping his emotions to himself in the Sri Lankan manner.

People have started to repair their homes, but the men are still too weary of the sea to fish. On Jan. 26, a month after the disaster, villagers held a remembrance ceremony.

When the tsunamis struck, the waves picked people up and slammed them into trees, bushes, walls and whatever else was there.

Most of what the team did was dig thorns out of infected wounds and tend to where palm fronds cut deeply into victims as they washed past.

There were crush injuries, too, from fallen rocks, and injured, unstable knees.

Strong antibiotics were given to the people who started coughing up black material days after inhaling seawater.

The painkiller ibuprofen was the most commonly used drug. The team ran out of eyeglasses to give to people who had lost theirs in the waves.

They worked out of tents and a concrete clinic building that was full of sand when the team first arrived. The waves had washed over it, too.

Aliyavalai is in a region held by the Tamil Tigers, who are fighting the government for independence. Border crossings into the region were tense, Woodard said, and people had guns.

“It was a weird place,” he said. “It was absolutely beautiful, but then you had these big land mine signs, concertina wire and pillboxes.

The team members left with their own worries. Would the wounds they tended fester again? Would the orphaned children be OK?

“The average person in Sri Lanka has very little to benefit from the government,” Woodard said. “There is no clear-cut plan in the Tamil area, at least, to get these people’s lives back together.

Nadarajah is already thinking of returning. He’s also talking with people from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who are thinking about picking up where the Good Samaritan team left off.

“We got a good start,” Woodard said.