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Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka: The healing touch - returned Sri Lankan refugees see and hear better

By Melissa Krall, IOM Sri Lanka

As part of its work to provide sustainable return and reintegration assistance to Sri Lankan refugees from India, IOM has seven mobile health clinics in the north of the country which, together with Sunflower Village, a local NGO, help to address hearing and vison problems among the people.

Young Vithusan has already faced and overcome many challenges in his seven years. He was born deaf and spent much of his life as a refugee in India after his family fled Sri Lanka's civil war.

However, his life took a more positive turn when he returned with his family to Punkudutivu in Jaffna district in northern Sri Lanka and visited an IOM mobile health clinic. The Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT) mobile screening team carefully assessed Vithusan's condition and discovered that the boy's condition could be treated. The team quickly provided him with a hearing aid that instantly restored his ability to hear and ended seven years of silence.

IOM and a local NGO, Sunflower Village, are now organizing a speech rehabilitation course in the capital, Colombo, for little Vithusan.

Acquiring the ability to hear will dramatically improve Vithusan's life and future prospects. But he is not alone. Many other Sri Lankans, both returned refugees and members of host communities, have also benefited from the mobility of IOM's health programme through the provision of wheelchairs, artificial limbs for the disabled and beds for pregnant women.

Mobile health care is particularly useful for blind people who lost their guides in the tsunami and were displaced into unfamiliar surroundings. Patients with problems such as eye and ear infections are treated on the spot, or in serious cases referred to nearby hospitals for specialized health care.

Much of the work in this programme is focused in conflict-affected areas of the north and east and after the tsunami, the mobile clinics were also deployed to tsunami-affected communities. They continue to provide much-needed care and advice, bringing hope for a brighter future for thousands of internally displaced persons, returned refugees and those affected by the tsunami.