First responders: trained professionals at the frontline during emergency or disaster, helping victims and minimising damage.
Dr Roshan Santosham found himself an unwitting first responder in December 2015, when he woke up to see the Cooum flooded over. With his friends, psychiatrist Dr Asgar Alam Kan and orthopaedician Dr Faraz Ahmed, Santhosham set up relief camp after relief camp around the city, creating a network of doctors and medical volunteers that swelled from three to 50 in three days. They tended to injuries, set broken bones and evaded malaria and dengue breakouts.
“The rescue workers were just doing rescue work. The city as a whole was helping with food. But hardly anything was being done as far as first aid was concerned. We had to do it, and we had to do it immediately.”
Still, the doctor has his regrets. One of them is monumental. Santhosham will be addressing them in his upcoming Ted Talk in Thiruvanmiyur. “Within three days, Asgar told us that trauma would be a problem. Only later did we realise that it was an overwhelming one.”
Before Dr Khan explained it to them, even these medical practitioners were unaware of this issue. “How do you talk to someone who has lost their kids? Or their parents, or their homes? They will need days and months of counselling. Some might even need medication to help deal with the trauma,” says Santosham, in retrospect.
So as the camps went on, the team tried to reel in more psychologists, just as they had to source everything from bandages to vaccines. “The first camp that we did, we ran out of supplies. And we had hardly scraped the tip of the iceberg: people were still living in murky waters, inside their flooded houses. A possible epidemic was round the corner.”
All these challenges were surmounted through phone calls and WhatsApp. “I was doing my induction classes at Apollo Hospitals, Greams Road at the time. The hospital itself was flooded, so I knew that the bigger hospitals would be inaccessible for some time,” he remembers.
People couldn’t get to the hospitals, so the doctors went to them. They shelled out their own money on supplies; distributors pitched in as much as they could. “From the second day, we started concentrating on dressing, first-aid, and vaccines. Malaria and dengue were possible epidemics.” The vaccines, says Roshan, were the most expensive of the lot. They had no choice but to buy it themselves till the major hospitals became fully functional.
By the fourth day, when hospitals opened up, volunteers had learnt how to dress wounds, administer ointments, and distribute medication. Only trained doctors could administer vaccines, and they managed. But the need for counsellors and psychologists could not be surmounted. It still nags at him.
“We don’t address emotional trauma properly. India is a country that will just pat you on your shoulder and say, ‘carry on’. But some children could not find their parents. In the Adyar Basin, next to Saidapet where we did our camp, rows of homes built on the banks had just washed away while they were sleeping,” he recalls.
“You can’t make someone who has lost their house, and their parents, have a two-minute conversation and be all right at the end of it. We didn’t even think about it till our friend explained it to us,” says Santosham. It was a problem that nobody even thought to solve. As Santosham puts it, “If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’re never going to find it.” This will form a major part of his TED Talk this weekend.
He will share the stage with activists, photojournalists, filmmakers and entrepreneurs who have played a part in changing the city for the better. The topics of conversation will vary from travel and music to LGBTQI rights, and everything in between. Among the speakers are activist Madhumitha Gomathinayagam, adventure entrepreneur Varun Gunaseelan and Shravan Sridhar and Mahesh Raghavan of Carnatic 2.0.
Put together by licensee curator Veena Balakrishnan and NGOs Make A Difference and Guardians of Dreams, the event will be a zero-waste event one, and everything from the creatives to goodie bags will promote sustainability.
TEDx Thiruvanmiyur will be held on August 12 at Holiday Inn, OMR. For details, call 8870514317.