One of the casualties of the tsunami that wrecked Indonesia's Aceh province was the medical system that kept residents healthy, and efforts to rebuild could take years. The Dec. 26 earthquake and waves killed doctors and nurses, destroyed hospitals and clinics and ruined stockpiles of medicines. The once-solid health care network now has trouble offering even such basic services as care for pregnant mothers and patients with diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illness. "There have been clinics completely destroyed with no trace of either the structure or the people that inhabited it," Dr. Jack Chow, assistant director general of the U.N. World Health Organization, said during a visit of the provincial capital. "It could take months if not years (to rebuild), given the range of devastation." Foreign aid groups and militaries provided the emergency care just after the tsunami. However, many of the foreign doctors who have flooded the province have had little to do since the first days of acute need because the most badly injured have been treated or died and epidemics that many feared would follow the disaster didn't materialize. A joint report by the United Nations, the Indonesian government and foreign aid organizations identified the restoration of the primary health care system as a pressing need. --more 1203 Local Time 0903 GMT
