Surgical Lessons Learned from the perspective of the Naval Rescue Coordination Center (MERZ)

During preparation of this deployment, expectation was that a huge number of injured would be without access to immediate medical care due to infrastructural and personnel bottlenecks (it was assumed that 50-70% of the medical personnel in the Banda Aceh area had become victims to the tsunami themselves) and, thus, would depend on delayed assistance provided by us. We arrived at Banda Aceh on 13 January 2005. At that point, initial medical treatment already had been provided by other nations and aid organizations as well as by remaining national personnel. We were faced with the following situation: