9 January 2005

Medical Team Begins Work in Banda Aceh

Cleaning up mountains of mud from the Banda Aceh Public Hospital is the first priority for an NZDF Medical Team deployed to Indonesia.

The Team arrived in the tsunami struck region last night and has formed an ANZAC unit with an Australian Defence Force, Health Support Company.

For the next two days the NZDF Medical Team will clean the earthquake and tsunami damaged hospital building where they are living and working.

“There’s a lot of mud, rubbish and even needles lying around the place that we need to clean up,” says Major Charmaine Pene from Banda Aceh.

“There is power, but were working on generating more so we can get an air condition unit running. There’s also a water treatment tank, but we’ll need to improve that so we can sustain what where doing here.”

The ANZAC unit will be a mainly surgical facility.

ENDS

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