Trauma hits tsunami survivors
03/01/2005 19:18  - (SA)  

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Bangkok - More than a week after a killer tsunami wreaked havoc in South Asia, the psychological aftershocks are beginning to take a toll on a growing number of survivors, a senior US official said on Monday.

Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) said his staff was seeing "disturbing" signs of spreading emotional trauma after the December 26 disaster that killed more than 145 000 people.

"You see this in many emergencies but not of this scale," Natsios told reporters on the plane taking a US delegation led by Secretary of State Colin Powell on a tour of tsunami-ravaged countries.

"We're beginning to see real psychological problems among many of the survivors. People going into shock, basically," he said. "It's a lot worse than we thought."

The US relief official said he was calling in psychological trauma units to deal with the emotional aftermath of the world's deadliest tsumani that ravaged a dozen Indian Ocean countries. He gave no details.

'Paralysed'

Natsios said that many people hit by the killer tidal waves could not cope with the loss of their family, their homes, neighbourhood or businesses. "They are paralysed. They can't act," he said.

Visits to stricken areas by high-level officials helped ease a sense of isolation and abandonment, he said, but more was needed.

He pointed to a $10m programme the United States had launched in Sri Lanka to put people to work cleaning up after the devastating tsunami, generated by an underwater earthquake off of Indonesia.

"One therapy we use is simply getting people to do something," he said. "If they are in shock and then they start getting a job to start cleaning up the mess, it does have an effect psychologically.

"It gets their body functioning and they have some sense of hope," Natsios said, adding that progress in clearing away debris was also part of the cure.

"Just the physical evidence of the mess is a reminder every hour of every day that everything is gone," he said.

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