Update from Dr. Vollertsen

Here’s the latest message from Norbert with the Korean Medical Association volunteers in Aceh, Indonesia. Scroll down for previous entries and information about Dr. Vollertsen’s sometimes controversial (and in my view, effective) activism for human rights in North Korea. You can see more on the Korean team’s activities here and here.

The second KEMAT left Jakarta on a Garuda Indonesia flight at 7:30 this morning and arrived at Banda Aceh airport at 11 AM. It looks like the air-transportation bottleneck is gone. One small glitch is that part of the cargo that couldn’t be on this flight didn’t make it on the next flight as promised and is still due at Banda Aceh.

The second team is made of various specialists including neurosurgery, general surgery, pediatrics, neuropsychiatry, family medicine, dermatology, and urology. They jumped right into treating various patients upon arrival. One special episode: a local patient with surgical cord injury from before suffered aggravation after the tsunami disaster. He had exhausted all his wherewithal for the medical bill amounting to 13 million Rupia (about US$ 1,400) at various camps in the disaster area, without much result. With the help of Dr. Jin-Hwan Chung, department of neurosurgery at Hanyang University, the patient experienced drastic improvement and couldn’t help thanking the Korean doctor profusely.

Another good news is that the arrival of much-needed pediatrician boosted the reputation of Korean doctors that was already well-established among the locals. Today the total number of patients treated at Korean camp exceeded 60.

All is well and Ms. Y.S. Park, our liaison officer in Jakarta, will be heading back home later tonight.

Farewell and may God bless you and all those who helped.

I’m proud of these people, and I’m not even Korean.