After the tsunamis struck, Abigail Thomas read a story about a physician determined to get relief to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Before New Year's Day, Thomas had signed up with the International Medical Health Organization to come to the town of Kilinochchi. Over the Jan. 22 weekend, she spoke with two newspaper reporters about what she was doing.


As she was escorting a 14-year-old girl to a refugee camp's makeshift clinic for counseling, Thomas told a Washington Times reporter that the young girl had begun menstruating for the first time and had no female relatives left to guide her. According to local custom, a young girl's first menstruation is cause for a month-long celebration, with cleansing rituals and special foods prepared by the girl's mother. "None of that is happening," Thomas told the reporter. "These are the kind of things you never think of." Read the Washington Times article.


She also spoke with a Baltimore Sun reporter about how important it is for humanitarian workers to tell those tsunami victims who have little contact with the outside world that the whole world knows about the tsunami, and that everyone feels terrible about the disaster. "It seemed amazingly empowering [for them] to have aid workers clearly from very far away," Thomas said. "They know they haven't been forgotten." Read the Sun article.

Many other faculty, students and alumni of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are currently involved in helping the survivors of the Dec. 26 tsunamis.