Christian Medical Association of India
The Christian Medical Association of India is a fellowship of Christian health professionals and health institutions serving churches in the ministry of health, healing and wholeness. It is the official health arm of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI). It has over 350 institutional members - hospitals, health centres, community health programmes and 2 medical colleges - Christian Medical College Vellore and Christian Medical College Ludhiana. The CMAI has over 5000 individual members - doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, health administrators and chaplains.
Immediately after the Tsunami struck, different offices of CMAI, namely Delhi and Bangalore , swung into action to collect information about the ground realities and to coordinate relief efforts. A need assessment survey was done. The hospitals near the coast were the first to respond. They had teams in the affected area by the evening of 26th:
CMAI's initial focus was to get more health teams to move to affected areas as quickly as possible, identifying local groups with knowledge of ground realities and alerting the hospital teams to possible areas of need. Apart from shock, a few people had fractures, and a large number of people had wounds and scratches that were becoming infected. These were received when they fell while running away from the sea, or when they were swept by the water into thorn bushes. Some had aspirated seawater and were developing respiratory infections. A few had diarrhoea. Thus, antibiotics, dressings, TT immunisation and counselling were the most necessary at the camps. CMAI's local coordinating team continued to work in the field and recruit health teams
CMAI continued to coordinate the efforts of other health teams and responded to calls for help. In response to calls for help from teams in Kanyakumari, a doctor and then a nurse team were sent there. Others in Kerala were kept on standby to go immediately if called. The CSI Bishop of Krishna Godavari District was contacted, the needs of the area assessed and three institutions in the region, located at Jadcherla (Mennonite), Vuyyuru (CSI) and Pithapurum (Telugu Baptist) were assigned to support the church's work.
CMAI constantly kept in touch with all teams in the field, assessing changes in the ground situation, alerting them to areas of need in their localities, linking them to local sources of help, sending financial assistance as required, and providing much needed moral support. Each of them was encouraged to pray regularly for the affected persons and the teams, and to raise local financial support. The CSI Madras Diocese requested support for providing school children of fisher-folk with books and uniforms. One hospital in the North had raised money; CMAI put them in touch with the Bishop.
In a consultation held on 7 th January at Chennai CMAI deliberated on its next phase. It was attended by member institutions, public health experts from the network and international organizations, and church leaders. Trauma counselling emerged as a primary need. Immediately after the tragedy, the CMAI core group on Trauma Counselling was alerted. They developed the plan to train 10 to 20, three-member teams from churches for counselling, and for training community counsellors. Based on the recommendations of the consultation, CMAI developed a parallel programme, where HIV/AIDS counsellors' skills will be upgraded, and they will train community counsellors.
CMAI has also designed a public health intervention to train individuals from along the coast to serve both as educators of their communities as well as ‘sentinels' to monitor public health issues and alert in the event of any outbreak.
CMAI: www.cmai.org
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