Sri Lanka to welcome Australian Doctors
Updated
The Sri Lankan Government has given permission to bring Australian doctors back to the war torn country. Jason Thomas, of the Australian Medical Aid Foundation and the International Advisroy Council has just returned from Sri Lanka where he was granted access not only to the high security zones but also inside IDP Camps.
Presenter: Stephanie Foxley
Speaker: Jason Thomas of the Australian Medical Aid foundation
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THOMAS: We're just working through the details of the criteria under which the doctors will be permitted to come back and work in the North and all going well I hope to take the first lot of doctors back to Sri Lanka in November this year.
FOXLEY: What guarantees will they have of safety bearing in mind that five doctors to date have already been detained.
THOMAS: Look I think that when you are operating in those environments, no one should leave Australian shores with any illusions about the conditions, I guess on the positive side the direct conflict has ended so the risks aren't as great as they were previously. We'll be under the authority of the Government of Sri Lanka and working directly with the Health Secretary Dr Kahandaliyanage and his people, that's pretty good assurance that the doctors will be looked after and won't be under any duress during those times.
FOXLEY: What do you know of the doctors who have been detained?
THOMAS: No, no I'm unfamiliar with the details wiht regard to those doctors, I have no idea why they would have been detained or the circumstance surrounding. I think the most important thing to realise is that the country has just finished a very devastating and long civil war, there is enourmous sensitivities around making sure that stabillity holds. Both the Government and the everyday person who has woken up now and realised that the country is no longer in such awful civil strife and we're simply going there to play a neutral role in focussing on the needs and the welfare and the medical requirements of children who might be sick and families who might be sick. It's our primary focus not to get involved in local or regional politics.
FOXLEY: What will be the main tasks for the visiting doctors when you get them out there in November?
THOMAS: There's two areas. Number one which is obviously in the camps themselves and obviously you would have seen that the Government has set a one hundred and eighty day timeframe for repatriating the internally displaced people, I thing that's optimistic because it's such a huge number of people. So we want to focus on working in the camps themselves, and when I spoke to you the last time I had just visited the primary health care centre that has been funded by one of the organisations that I'm on the board of..and the second priority is to work in the hospitals near the camps because they have more serious cases that need to be addressed there. So we are looking for doctors who have skills in pediatrics, trauma, anything to do with pshyco-social work, womens health issues, they're the main areas that we'd like to call upon to come to Sri Lanka and work with the people.
