MARK COLVIN: Ten months after the Bali bombings there are still many lessons to be learned about Australia's medical response to the disaster. One doctor who has learned a very personal lesson is plastic surgeon, Vijith Vijayasekaran.
He and his wife, who's an anaesthetist, had just arrived in Bali on holiday when the bombs went off. So they were among the first specialists at the Denpasar Hospital. Today, Doctor Vijayasekaran told the World Congress on Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery that Australia needed a national response team to cope with such events.
Julia Limb reports.
JULIA LIMB: Perth plastic surgeon Vijith Vijayasekaran and his wife Priya Thalayasingam had just arrived in Bali for a holiday when the bombs went off. When they got to the hospital in Denpasar they found a chaotic scene, where they set to work helping treat the wounded.
Dr Vijith Vijayasekaran.
VIJITH VIJAYASEKARAN: It was really chaos. There were large numbers of patients all who were in wards but all who had been essentially poorly resuscitated because the hospital was obviously struggling to cope with the number of patients. There were a number of civilian volunteers who were there with the patients, and when we arrived, we were probably the first of the Australian medical staff to arrive.
JULIA LIMB: Dr Vijayasekaran attempted to salvage the damaged limbs of the burns victims and made the final decision on which patients would be sent to Australia, under very difficult circumstances.
VIJITH VIJAYASEKARAN: We transferred out the sickest patients initially. Some of them then did succumb and you could critically look back at it and say we could have transferred out some of the less injured patients initially and left the more critically injured patients in the Bali.
However, the patients were young, they had severe injuries, they were all communicating with us when we got there and we had to give them every chance of survival and that is part of the reason we transferred out the sickest patients to Australia initially.
JULIA LIMB: But he also learned some very important lessons about life.
