Abstract

On 26 December 2004, a series of earthquakes followed by tsunami with an epicentrum in Indian Ocean next to the northwest coast of Sumatra Island caused very serious damaged in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD) and North Sumatra Provinces. Around 100 - 150 thousand population were predicted to be the victims, either dead, missing or seriously wounded due to this world biggest disaster in 2004. This disaster also destroyed the local health services and their human resources on health. A team of rapid assessment was peiformed by Ministry of Health (MOH) to provide inputs for rehabilitation of the local health services. Observation, interview and document searching were used as the methods of this rapid assessment. Although there were many weaknesses of this rapid assessment, some findings, analysis and recommendations were provided by the team as follows: 1. MOB should take over immediately and responsible to the recovery of the local health services and solved the 10 issues found by the team; 2. The three phases recommended by the team especially for CDC programs should be considered seriously to be carried out after the tsunami; 3. Deeper assessment should be carried after the basic health system in NAD was recovered; and 4. Rebuilding of local HCs and hospitals as well as supplying the human resources on health should be planned and implemented immedietely.