Where We Work: Indonesia
Indonesia is a nation of over 17,000 islands spread over thousands of miles of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans along some of the world’s busiest sea lanes. Although not constitutionally an Islamic state, with 86% of its 243 million people followers of the Muslim faith, Indonesia is widely considered the world’s largest Muslim country. The Indonesian archipelago is highly active geologically, making it unusually vulnerable to earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions. It suffered greater damage from the 2004 tsunami than any other country. It also lost more people, with an estimated 160,000 Indonesians among the more than 220,000 lives claimed in the disaster.
International Medical Corps is one of the few international relief organizations to work in Indonesia before, during and after the tsunami. We were among the first to respond to that catastrophe and one of the few to remain once the emergency had ended. We provided a broad range of health care-related programs to help the people of Aceh back on their feet. Those efforts also included primary and secondary health care, emergency preparedness and response programs to better prepare local relief groups for disaster response missions and psychosocial programs to help Indonesians cope emotionally with the aftermath. In early 2010, we concluded our emergency relief work helping victims of a major Sept., 2009 earthquake in Sumatra. Our Jakarta-based national staff is currently exploring ways to expand programming for health and nutrition programs in less developed parts of the country.