Association of Medical Doctors of ASIA, founded in 1984, Consultative Status with UN ECOSOC since 1995

The ground team consisted of one leader, two doctors, one midwife, one pharmacist and three volunteers. The volunteers were mainly working as translators, however, they sometimes had to engage themselves in dispensing drugs or treating external wounds of the patients. At one time, the team had to see around 100-150 patients in three hours and it was a lot of work for doctors with just two of them at the clinic. It also took them such a long time to instruct the patients as some of them could not read or had no knowledge of health or sanitation. As a whole, AMDA clinic was a functional primary health-post, tending to the needs of the outpatients.

The number of visitors to the clinic was around ten people per day. Often they were introduced to AMDA clinic by other non-medical aid organizations. We sometimes needed to refer patients to other medical facilities for more serious cases.

The patients were mostly male and female adults as well as children below five years of age. The common symptoms were fever, respiratory infections, headache, dermatitis, eye-related ailments, fatigue, headache, and epigastric pain. Skin ailments were also common. Surprisingly, only less than 10% of people complained of diarrhea, which was just like Japan. No sign of diphtheria was seen but pertussis were found among a pair of brothers visiting the clinic. I strongly felt that the call for early prevention, treatment and immunization was a must.

Overall, a lot of patients with malnutrition were seen, but to my great regret we could not do much other than providing them with vitamin supplements. Especially for young children who were suffering from chronic malnutrition, we felt so powerless that we could not help them at all. For severe cases, we referred them to BRAC, a local Bangladeshi NGO keenly carrying out nutrition programs. It gave us a sense of security for having such a reliable organization around us.

At AMDA clinic, maternal care was solely handled by one midwife and at best she could probably handle five patients per day. As I heard there were over 60,000 women who were expecting a child in the camp, I wanted to know how they were actually giving birth to them.

As for people with physical and mental disabilities, AMDA was keen to support people with Down syndrome. AMDA Bangladesh had already been carrying out a project in this field. They were going around the camp to look for people with Down syndrome, and helped them take part in social activities or provided necessary assistance for the so-called social inclusion. On a practical level, the team went around to see the leader of each community for the screening of those individuals, so that the doctors could help people who might have been suffering from complications. In reality, though, there was a limit to this activity considering the scale of the refugee camp and AMDA’s capacity.

Advice for medical personnel seeking to join the mission:
Prior to taking part in this mission, I firmly recommend all of the medical personnel to take precautions against mosquitos (malaria) and type-A hepatitis. Likewise, one should remember that diphtheria, tetanus, rabies and cholera should also be taken into consideration. Other than this, we definitely need more midwives as there are so many things they can do for the entire refugee population

Last but not least, it is very important to take care of our staff as the local staff members seemed to be obviously exhausted. Since this is a year-long project, burn-out of the staff is what we need to avoid the most.