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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (1297)	3/15/2005 8:57:17 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

American ship brings Aceh boy long-awaited cure 06 Mar 2005 02:59:29 GMT Source: Reuters By Tomi Soetjipto USNS MERCY, off Indonesia, March 6 (Reuters) - After seven operations and a year of agony, Zahrul Ihsan finally found the cure he had dreamed of in the wake of the killer tsunami which devastated his homeland, Indonesia's Aceh province. Eating fried chicken in bed aboard the giant American hospital ship USNS Mercy, Ihsan, 4, now appears in little pain from the burns that scarred his back and crippled him. Two operations by American surgeons have given him hope of leading a normal life. Doctors from around the world flocked to Aceh to help those injured by the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami. That has allowed people like Ihsan, suffering from conditions unrelated to the disaster, to benefit from world-class medical and surgical care provided by ships such as the 1,000-bed Mercy. Ihsan's father and an aunt staying aboard the ship, anchored in waters just off the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, said Ihsan had sustained third degree burns from his lower back to his knees when a stove exploded in his Banda Aceh home nearly a year ago. The blast ripped most of the skin tissue from his lower back. His knees contracted so that he could not stand. Despite seven operations at Banda Aceh's main hospital, Ihsan made little progress. He had been due to undergo an eighth operation on Dec. 27, the day after the tsunami, but the giant waves badly damaged the hospital and emergency medical care was the priority. "There were no doctors when the emergency services came. They were all busy with tsunami victims," said aunt Sri Nurmadiah, 22. Ihsan would never have been able to walk without the two operations he underwent aboard the Mercy, said Steven Ferrara, head of the ship's radiology unit. "It's pretty complex surgery. There's a lot of issue with fluid loss and there are other technical aspects to preserve the muscle and everything. (Doctors) had to do multiple skin graft procedures to cover the damage." The 272-metre (894-ft) ship currently has 30 inpatients with dozens more outpatients brought in each day. Doctors have performed close to 200 surgeries since the ship arrived in Aceh last month, said spokesman Lieutenant Bashon Mann. The Mercy is scheduled to leave in around two weeks. Patients are flown on board each day by helicopters that do shuttle runs from Banda Aceh's airport. Mann insisted that the ship had no political mission in the world's most populous Muslim nation, which has been highly critical of U.S. policies in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. "People tend to get lost in the politics of all of this. Politics aside, if you have doctors and nurses that are able to go somewhere, I don't care what cultural background you have, that's the priority all the time," Mann said. What matters for the patients is getting the sort of treatment they would never get in Aceh, one of Indonesia's poorer provinces where a long-running rebellion has disrupted government services. Civil servant Yulizar Yusuf, 50, developed a colossal tumour on his face 10 years ago. It ate away his nose bones. Doctors on the ship reconstructed his nasal area and took bones from his hips for a graft. They also performed surgery to remove the tumour on his lower jaw. Yusuf's face is no longer swathed with bandages although he still has some trouble speaking. His wife, Adlina, said she hoped her husband could make a full recovery. Asked if she had ever imagined Yusuf would get proper treatment, she exclaimed: "Subhanallah" (Allah is the holiest), a Muslim expression of gratitude and total submission to God. alertnet.org