Today

January 5, 2005

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:

The Indian Ocean tsunami may well be the most destructive natural catastrophe of our lifetimes. The toll is staggering, not only in fatalities, but also in injury, homelessness, infrastructure damage and disruption to developing societies that already were in some ways far more fragile than our own.

The potential is also immense for additional human misery, caused not directly by flood waters but by illness, starvation and lack of safe drinking water.

Given the vast scope of the disaster, I have been pleased, though not surprised, to learn that a number of us at Johns Hopkins are responding with assistance, expertise and generous financial support.

At the same time, I fear that some at Johns Hopkins may have suffered a loss or be worried about a missing family member, loved one or friend. I want to address both situations in this message. First, the Johns Hopkins response:

The Bloomberg School of Public Health-based Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies is sending a faculty member and student to assist in public health assessments in Aceh Province, the hardest-hit area of Indonesia. A team of emergency department nurses from Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center has left Baltimore for a relief mission to Indonesia, where they will be working with emergency medicine physician Alex Vu of the School of Medicine, who also is associated with CIEDRS.

Another group, including School of Medicine faculty of Sri Lankan descent assisted by other faculty, is preparing to go to Sri Lanka as part of an International Medical Health Organization team. Johns Hopkins Medicine will contribute drugs and medical supplies to the team's efforts.

Public Health faculty and students who already were in the affected nations before the tsunami struck are, of course, doing everything they can to provide short-term and long-term assistance. The same is true of JHPIEGO, which has worked in Indonesia for more than 30 years. Its staff were sent by the Indonesian government last week to help assess conditions in Aceh and are collaborating with CARE on its relief efforts in tsumani-affected areas. JHPIEGO will also contribute information technology support for ongoing relief efforts.

Johns Hopkins alumni are also deeply involved in the relief effort. For instance, a SAIS graduate is being sent to coordinate CARE's relief efforts in Sri Lanka. Dean Sommer reports that Public Health has over the years trained more than 170 South Asia public health professionals in disaster management. The most recent course ended just months ago.

Closer to home, faculty from SAIS, Engineering and Public Health, and most likely from other divisions, have been working with the news media to help the public better understand the disaster and its implications.

And of course, many of you who are not in a position to provide direct assistance have been most generous with financial support for the many relief agencies that are active throughout the tsunami zone. I urge you to continue doing so; the need for your contributions will only increase as disaster teams complete their assessments and embark on long-term rebuilding in addition to the current efforts to provide immediate assistance.

The Baltimore Sun has compiled an extensive list of non-governmental agencies you can consider supporting; many of them are headquartered in Baltimore or nearby. You can find the Sun's list at tinyurl.com/5bec7 The Bloomberg School of Public Health has also compiled a list of relief agencies, available at www.jhsph.edu/Tsunami/Relief_Agencies.html.

I believe that those of us at Johns Hopkins who are trying to help may benefit from an opportunity to trade information and perhaps coordinate efforts. To that end, the staff at IT@Johns Hopkins has created a message board for your use. Starting today, that message board became available at tsunamiresponse.johnshopkins.edu.

You will need your JHED log-in ID and password in order to access the site. I urge anyone with a tsunami response initiative under way to post information there.

The other side of the situation in the Indian Ocean is the toll it may have exacted on members of our own Johns Hopkins community. Sadly, I feel certain that there are those among us who are grieving a personal loss or who have been unable to establish contact with a loved one who was in the region at the time of the tsunami. We want to hear from any student, faculty member or staff member who has been affected, so that we can ensure that Johns Hopkins is offering the appropriate support at this difficult time. If you are affected, please send an e-mail message to tsunami@jhu.edu, telling us your name, your position at Johns Hopkins (including divisional affiliation), your contact information, and the loss you have experienced. We will forward the message to the appropriate university staff and ask them to be in touch with you to see if there is anything that they can do to help. My deepest thanks go to all who are responding to this disaster in any way and our hearts reach out to any members of the university community for whom this disaster has taken a personal toll.

Sincerely,
William R. Brody