Twenty-year-old Dewi is home.

It isn’t much, but her elated relatives
have cleared out a patch of ground beside the ruined remains of the
family home where she will convalesce over the next few weeks.

Though badly injured in Saturday’s
earthquake, the 20-year-old factory worker leapt at IOM’s
offer to help her return from the hospital to Karang Nongko Jatas,
a small village in Bantul district, Indonesia.

“She is a good girl,” her elder
brother Dono says. “She is giving and willing to help the
community and we are very happy to have her back.”

Dewi was attending to her household chores
when what sounded like a low-flying airplane rattled the walls of
her brick home set among verdant rice paddies.

Her entire family fled the building but the
young factory worker and community volunteer was petrified, unable
to move. Dono, 26, recalls seeing her framed in the doorway as the
entire building collapsed around her.

Within seconds, the 6.2-magnitude earthquake
leveled virtually every building in this and dozens of other
villages across hundreds of square kilometers of the agricultural
heartland of Java, the most populous island on the planet. The
Indonesian government puts the death toll at over 6,200 and though
early estimates vary, as many as 130,000 homes were either
completely destroyed or badly damaged.

Though Dono and the rest of the family managed
to escape, all were so seriously injured by falling debris that
they were unable to dig Dewi out from beneath the demolished
building. Fortunately, Indonesian soldiers arrived to release her
from the rubble and transport Dewi to Sardjito hospital in
Yogjakarta where she was treated for a badly broken arm and
strained muscles.

Dono attended to his little sister for several
days, just one patient among the hundreds recovering from their
injuries in a three-level parkade attached to the hospital’s
administration building. When they heard of IOM’s offer of a
free drive home and medical attention, they immediately asked for
help.

On Wednesday morning, IOM nurse Hermilah, who
like many Indonesians only has one name, and Dono wheeled the young
woman outdoors for the first time since the disaster, and a waiting
vehicle provided by the Organization ferried her back to the ruined
village where she was born.

Assisting in the orderly and voluntary return
of medical evacuees is a core IOM mission, says senior migration
physician Dr. Nenette Motus.

“As long as they are well enough it is
best to get these patients out of hospitals as soon as
possible,” she said. “It reduces the chances they
contract an infection there and reduces the workload in these
overcrowded hospitals which frees up medical staff to handle more
serious cases.”

The Organization provided similar support
services in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami and organized the
return to Nias island of close to 600 patients treated at hospitals
in Medan, North Sumatra and the USNS Mercy hospital ship following
the powerful March 2005 earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra
island.

IOM began its assisted return program three
days after the Saturday morning earthquake in Java and by
week’s end had helped more than 500 people, including family
members of the injured, back to their villages.

At the request of local health officials the
Organization is also identifying rooming houses and small hotels in
Yogjakarta that can be used as transit centers for newly discharged
patients.

“Many patients have no homes to return
to or are not prepared yet to go back to their villages so they
really need a safe, secure place to live while they recuperate from
their injuries,” Dr. Motus said.

Medical staff in Bantul, the hardest-hit
district are also identifying patients for surgery and transporting
them in a fleet of 20 minivans to the US Marine mobile field
hospital in an effort to relieve some of the pressure on the local
hospital. A similar service is also being provided to the 60-bed
field hospital opened by the Indonesian Red Cross.

Back in Karang Nongko Jatas, Dono says Dewi is
still traumatized by the earthquake.

“She has difficulty sleeping at night
and automatically covers her ears in fear whenever she hears a loud
noise,” he says. “But she is back home where she
belongs.”