Deprivation a deadly encore to devastation

By Greg Ansley

With our troops

DILI - A new wave of social crises is beginning in East Timor as the island emerges from the carnage of the militias to face a world devoid of order.

In Dili, where life is returning to some semblance of normality, backstreet violence and petty crime are being met by neighbourhood vigilante groups, severe parental trauma is being reflected in unconscious child neglect, and health problems from deprivation are becoming endemic.

At one clinic outside Dili, conducted by Timor Aid, doctors reported one mother in five with a "grey baby," symptomatic of serious anaemia in both mother and child.

Similar conditions are expected to become even more widespread among a population living almost entirely on aid rice.

Small roadside stalls selling fresh fruit and vegetables are beginning to appear, although supplies are minimal.

The onset of the wet season in the next few weeks will allow Timorese to grow the green vegetables needed to improve their protein and vitamin-deficient diet, provided sufficient supplies of seeds become available.

The city is also beginning to reveal the psychological damage inflicted by the militias on a population subjected to appalling brutality and terror. One 10-year-old boy died in Dili after lapsing into a catatonic coma.

"There will be a percentage of children who are severely traumatised, and there will be a range of others who will have a range of issues, even if it is just a hardening to violence," said Daniel Wordsworth, of the Christian Children's Fund, which will this week bring two consulting psychologists to Dili to assess the city's trauma needs.

While experience in other countries suggests that only 10 per cent of children will suffer from severe trauma, the incidence will probably be far higher among adults.

"We've noticed among our own staff that they are just walking around in a fog," Mr Wordsworth said.

Many refugee mothers at the sports centre, now a temporary home for several thousand people whose homes and possessions were destroyed, have been too traumatised or too afraid to take sick children to medical clinics.

Others suffering severe trauma have not been able to recognise the signs of illness in their children, or have been unable to take care of simple matters of diet, hygiene and general health.

"So you have rising problems of acute respiratory infection amongst children, you have problems of diarrhoea, you have weeping sores because of lack of water and lack of personal cleanliness and hygiene," Mr Wordsworth said.

Timor's problems will be compounded by the wet season, which will descend on the island before even a small proportion of its population can be housed.

Even tarpaulins are in short supply, despite a CARE Australia plan to distribute plastic sheeting to as many as 13,000 families in the next three weeks.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is raising funds for materials for rudimentary homes.

But the programme will not reach tens of thousands of East Timorese made homeless by the terror, and few of the houses will be completed before the rains come.

As one aid worker conceded: "It's only going to touch a small segment of society."