In the aftermath of disasters in areas where populations live in close proximity and where sanitation and water supplies are compromised, an environment is created which is conducive to epidemics of vaccine-preventable diseases.
A strong earthquake occurred in Haiti in January 2010, severely affecting Port au Prince, the capital of the country, and the Government was functionally damaged. Over 220,000 people lost their lives and over 300,000 were injured.
Around 1.3 million people are living in temporary shelters in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and over 500,000 people have left the disaster areas to seek refuge in the rest of the country.
In Haiti, one of the world's most impoverished countries, the weak routine vaccination coverage was noted and the vaccination campaign was concerned as one of the first priorities.
The Japanese Red Cross (JRC) sent a medical team, called an ERU (Emergency Response Unit) right after the earthquake and provided medical services such as clinics in affected areas.
At the same time, we were involved in the vaccination campaign as one of the key players in the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in responding to the mass vaccination campaign by the Ministry of Health supported by WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF.
More than 150,000 people were vaccinated in 1 month by all Red Cross members. 35,217 of them were by JRC and the coverage was 75.5% according to the random survey. Including all the activities, it took more than 3 months and 62% of initially estimated population was vaccinated until the end.
After disasters, people typically move to other places seeking a better environment so mass vaccination campaign has to be carried out immediately, once it is decided upon. The selection of target populations, vaccines and good cooperation with other organizations is the key to success.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 198 women aged 40–70 years who underwent mass screening for osteoporosis at our hospital between 2016 and 2019. The BMD values and the following data were collected: age, body mass index, fracture history, lower back pain, height loss, kyphosis, history of fragility fracture, family history of vertebral or hip fracture, and menopause. The reliability of each data point for the young adult mean <80% was calculated using discriminant analysis. Variables with large weight coefficients were selected and scored. This scoring tool was examined, and a cutoff score for predicting the young adult mean <80% was determined. Results: Sixty-four participants (32.3%) had a young adult mean <80%. According to the weight coefficients, the following five variables were scored as follows: age ≥60 years 3 points, body mass index <22 kg/m2 3 points, lower back pain 1 point, height loss (cm) 1 point, and menopause 1 point. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.738 (95% confidence interval, 0.669–0.807). At cutoff scores of ≥5 and <5, the sensitivity was 82.8%, with specificity of 52.0%. Conclusions The scoring tool performed well for predicting young adult mean <80% among perimenopausal and postmenopausal women in Japan. This tool may be useful to screen for low BMD.