| The Ministry of Public Health today admitted that the December tsunami had provided several invaluable lessons in how to deal with a large-scale disaster, stressing that the unavailability of dental records was proving the main obstacle to successfully identifying Thai victims.
Addressing delegates gathering in Thailand's southern resort island of Phuket for an international meeting on the public health implications of the tsunami, Dr. Supachai Kunaratnapruk, the Deputy Permanent Secretary for Public Health, noted that the tsunami had left the entire region desperately improvising measures to deal with mass death.
While pointing to the praise that Thailand had received from the international community for the way it had dealt with the disaster, he said that the tsunami had also taught Thailand several lessons and that adjustments needed to be made for future disaster plans.
One of the main criticisms - in hindsight - is the lack of initial information on the corpses, with officials and volunteers left confused about the location and the condition in which each corpse was found.
Advance planning, Dr. Supachai noted, would help facilitate both the return to bodies to their relatives, and liaison with foreign governments in corpse identification work.
He also stressed the urgent need for Thais to update their dental records, noting that while 85 percent of the foreign tsunami victims had been successfully identified from dental x-rays, very few of the Thai victims had had any dental records from which they could be identified.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka and Indonesia told the delegates at the conference that they had drawn on Thailand's use of local volunteer networks to help restore the morale of tsunami victims
"Psychological rehabilitation is an important issue", Dr. M.L. Somchai Chakrabhand, Director-General of the Department of Mental Health, told the conference.
"All afflicted countries have experienced broadly similar problems", he said.
But in many cases, it was the Thai experience that other afflicted countries found themselves drawing on.
With a strong existing network of local village-based public health volunteers, survivors were able to receive advice from people who were aware of the local situation and local needs.
"Sri Lanka and Indonesia applied the Thai blueprint of public health volunteers", Dr. Somchai noted.
"Sri Lanka said that while in the past it had a similar volunteer network, it proved unsuccessful due to continuous lack of support. But when they experienced a situation in which a huge number of people were killed, the example from Thailand proved a good one", he said.
But he stressed that to cope better with future disasters, Thailand needs more public health experts, more vehicles, better communications networks and more benefits and incentives for volunteers.
Although tsunami survivors in Thailand have experienced a range of mental health problems, only around 10 percent have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Only 10 survivors were required to be admitted to psychiatric hospital following the disaster, and the majority of these already had existing mental health conditions.
On 26 May the Department of Mental Health is to officially open a mental health centre for tsunami victims based on Phang-nga's Takua Pa district.
With a remit of supporting tsunami survivors for the next two years, the Bt20 million centre will be staffed by psychiatrists, psychologists and other experts, with an emphasis on community participation.
By: MCOT, Thailand
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