What we learn from Sumatra Disaster 2025

Key lessons learned from Sumatra Disaster 2025 were:

1.The need of Blood Establishment self-assessment during the disaster

The blood establishment should do self-assessment including the condition of the affected blood establishment, the surrounding area and the capacity of blood establishment after disaster. During the Sumatra Disaster, communication and transportation were disrupted so it blood collections activity. From self-assessment analysis, the blood establishment in the districts, provinces and head-quarter could decide the emergency status, disaster scale and operational responsibility. In terms of determining the scale of a disaster, there should be a provision that could be reference for blood establishment.

2. The need of national or regional level coordination.

Even at all levels, every blood establishment must be able to play a role in implementing emergency disaster response services quickly and accurately, but it should be coordinated. There should be a matrix that showed responsibilities at each level based on the disaster scale. The coordination not only internal Indonesian Red Cross but also with other stake holders relevant to support blood establishments. For example, during the Sumatra disaster, one of the big supports was the help of Indonesian Air Force for transporting the blood from Jakarta to Aceh province.

3. The need of reporting system.

The blood demand, the blood stock availability in other blood centers were important information that must be available and analyzed daily during Sumatera disaster. The limited frequency and capacity of flight to Aceh province was also factor needed to be considered. Based on the analysis, it should be sent daily because there were 12 blood establishments and hospitals in the affected area but unfortunately the number of blood bags that can be supplied was limited due to the long holidays and also because the blood establishments in other areas had to be prepared for the fasting month.

We also need the usage report from hospitals to get the real demands but at the moment, we could not get the data. We heard that two patients needed massive transfusion during the disaster. We hope they got the appropriate transfusion.

The supporting system for reporting should be prepared in the disaster. But if no electricity and if all the computers were damaged during the disaster, manual reporting was the alternative method that should be conducted. Other point from reporting system was level of reporting system, to whom the data should be sent to. It may differ based on the emergency status and disaster scale.

4. The need of alternative transportation method. The headquarter of Indonesian Red Cross lies in Jakarta. We sent the blood to Aceh using Hercules plane from Indonesian Air Force based on their schedule. Sometimes, it was late at night so we had to keep the blood at Aceh Blood Center before it was sent to other remote blood center in Aceh province. Team of Aceh Blood Center also had to repack the blood in the cold-box and change the ice-pack to maintain the suitable temperature during transportation.

Other congestion during transportation when many bridges were damaged, so we had to use raft boats to cross the rivers with swift water flow. From this scenario, we should consider other methods of transportation that was safe in the future such as drones. Validation of transportation was crucial and shared to blood centers.