Days after an enormous tsunami battered parts of South East Asia on December 26, 2004, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams began providing assistance to individuals in need of medical care, food, water, shelter and other basic necessities.
MSF offices sent over 200 volunteers who concentrated their efforts on hard-hit communities in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, with smaller scale activities in Thailand, Malaysia and India. Assessments completed by MSF teams across the tsunami region showed different needs in different countries, but it became quickly apparent that medical needs were limited. The mobilisation of national emergency services and civil society saved the most lives in the first crucial days and, despite widespread predictions, there were no major disease outbreaks in the aftermath of the disaster.
MSF's main role was identifying needs that were being overlooked by local health services. The greatest focus of MSF activities was in Aceh, Indonesia, where many key health personnel were killed in the tsunami, and the health infrastructure destroyed. In Thailand, MSF responded by helping Burmese migrant workers who found themselves in a particularly difficult situation. In India, MSF offered psychological support. In Sri Lanka, where the damage was more extensive, MSF initially provided medical assistance and distributed relief goods.
MSF's work in Aceh evolved over the course of 2005 to address the health needs of local people. MSF then scaled down its activities over the next year and finally handed over its projects to local health authorities in December 2006.
The tsunami provoked unprecedented and extremely generous financial support from the public. Less than a week after the disaster happened, MSF took the contraversial decision to stop accepting funds for the tsunami. We knew that we already had huge sums of money to support our emergency work in the affected region, and were determined that our programmes should be driven by need alone, and not by a desire to spend surplus funds. Many of the places we work around the world are dire humanitarian crises which receive no media attention and therefore little funding. We asked donors to continue to support our work, but to allow us to direct our funds to the places where we saw the most need.
Despite this announcement MSF sections received 110 million euros allocated to tsunami response. MSF contacted donors to ask their permission to use their donations for other emergencies and forgotten crises. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Of all the people contacted, 1% asked for their money to be refunded rather than redirected.