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Surgery in the conflict region of Sri Lanka
1Surgery Department, Women's and Children's Hospital, North Adelaide, Australia.
Background:
Médecins Sans Frontières provides medical support to Batticaloa, a town on the east coast, which is in the conflict region of Sri Lanka.
Methods:
Information on the range of pathology, the services provided and the diseases treated was collected from a 25 day assignment in mid-1995.
Results:
Services and facilities are limited and the amount of work is extensive, as indicated by the 248 patients who had one or more operations and 814 surgical cases who were admitted. Ten per cent of the work was with conflict-injured patients and the remainder covered a wide range of specialties. Complications were surprisingly few.
Conclusions:
The surgical support supplied through Médecins Sans Frontières gives the people of Batticaloa much needed medical care and allows surgeons the opportunity to have an enormously satisfying experience.