BACKGROUND: Natural and man-made disasters, especially those occurring in large scales not only result in human mortality, but also cause physical, psychological, and social disabilities. Providing effective rehabilitation services in time can decrease the frequency of such disabilities. The aim of the current study was to perform a systematic review related to rehabilitation of vulnerable groups in emergencies and disasters. METHODS: The systematic review was conducted according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The key words "recovery", "rehabilitation", "reconstruction", "transformation", "transition", "emergency", "disaster", "crisis", "hazard", "catastrophe", "tragedy", "mass casualty incident", "women", "female", "children", "pediatric", "disable", "handicap", "elder", "old" and "vulnerable" were used in combination with Boolean operators OR and AND. ISI Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Ovid, ProQuest, Wiley, Google Scholar were searched. RESULTS: In this study a total of 11928 articles were considered and 25 articles were selected for final review of rehabilitation of vulnerable groups based on the objective of this study. Twenty-five studies including six qualitative, sixteen cross-sectional and three randomized controlled trials were reviewed for rehabilitation of vulnerable groups in emergencies and disasters. Out of the selected papers, 23 were studied based on rehabilitation after natural disasters and the remaining were man-made disasters. Most types of rehabilitation were physical, social, psychological and economic. CONCLUSION: The review of the papers showed different programs of physical, physiological, economic and social rehabilitations for vulnerable groups after emergencies and disasters. It may help health field managers better implement standard rehabilitation activities for vulnerable groups.

BACKGROUND:After a disaster, all victims have to be rapidly and accurately identified for locating, tracking and regulating them. The purpose of this study was to summarize people's experiences that how the patients were tracked in past earthquake disasters in Iran. METHODS:A qualitative study was carried out in 2015. This was an interview-based qualitative study using content analysis. The interviewed people included physicians, nurses, emergency medical technicians, disaster managers, Red Crescent Society' first responders and managers. Participants were identified using a snow ball sampling method. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, coded, and entered into MAXQDA (version 10) for coding and content analysis. RESULTS:Three main themes and seven categories including content (recoding data), function (identification of victims, identification of the deceased, informing the patients' relatives, patients' evacuation and transfer, and statistical reporting), technology (the state of using technology) were identified that showed the patient tracking status in past earthquakes in Iran. CONCLUSION:Participants believed that to identify and register the data related to patients or the dead, no consistent action plan was available. So developing a consistent patient tracking system could overcome this issue and improve patient safety.