Betacoronavirus ; Communicable Disease Control ; organization & administration ; Coronavirus Infections ; epidemiology ; prevention & control ; transmission ; Disaster Planning ; organization & administration ; Humans ; Nuclear Medicine ; organization & administration ; Pandemics ; prevention & control ; Pneumonia, Viral ; epidemiology ; prevention & control ; transmission ; Singapore

The definition of a disaster varies across research institutions, although it is generally regarded as a sudden event that demands more resources than the community can offer. Disaster medicine originates from military medicine. It is a new field of medicine that has much in common with emergency medicine, but focuses more on disaster management, targeting populations. It plays a key role both in the pre-event period by helping with disaster preparedness and in the event of a disaster by providing disaster medical services, including on-scene emergency life-saving interventions, thereby contributing to a decrease in the preventable mortality rate. Triage is a system used to sort mass disaster victims according to severity, enabling resources to be allocated, distributed, and utilized more efficiently. During disasters, a hospital should respond to the surge in patients in accordance with the standards and principles of disaster medicine by activating its emergency operation plan, converting the usual medical system into the emergency system, and putting disaster response teams into operation. Disaster medicine is the key discipline for all aspects of preparedness and response to conventional disasters, and even to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive events.
Disaster Medicine ; Disaster Victims ; Disasters ; Emergencies ; Emergency Medicine ; Humans ; Military Medicine ; Mortality ; Triage

As well for optimized emergency management in individual cases as for optimized mass medicine in disaster management, the principle of the medical doctors approaching the patient directly and timely, even close to the site of the incident, is a long-standing marker for quality of care and patient survival in Germany. Professional rescue and emergency forces, including medical services, are the "Golden Standard" of emergency management systems. Regulative laws, proper organization of resources, equipment, training and adequate delivery of medical measures are key factors in systematic approaches to manage emergencies and disasters alike and thus save lives. During disasters command, communication, coordination and cooperation are essential to cope with extreme situations, even more so in a globalized world. In this article, we describe the major historical milestones, the current state of the German system in emergency and disaster management and its integration into the broader European approach.
Disaster Medicine ; history ; Emergency Medical Services ; history ; Emergency Medicine ; history ; Germany ; History, 20th Century ; History, 21st Century ; Humans ; Registries

BACKGROUND: Despite existing disaster preparedness policies in the Philippines, there has not been any validated assessment of the quality of disaster medical response, which would require reliable aggregate data on patient diagnoses and management.

OBJECTIVE: This mixed-methods study documented the diagnoses, triage classification and case management of patients seen by Philippine EMS groups who responded to the Typhoon Haiyan disaster in the Philippines in November and December 2013, as well as difficulties associated in gathering these data, using the Utstein-style Template for Uniform Data Reporting of Acute Medical Response in Disasters as framework.

METHODS: Three hundred (300) individuals vetted by EMS organizations were invited to answer a survey modeled after the Utstein-style template, and submit tallies of patients seen. Out of 52 responses received, policy recommendations were subsequently generated on concerns assessed by the template using the nominal group technique.

RESULTS: The submitted data yielded a total of 41,202 patients with information on age, sex, and diagnosis; 19,193 with triage classification; and 27,523 with information on case management. The focus group discussion underlined the absence of a standard communication and information management system. Participants recommended establishing such a system and highlighted the role of the Department of Health - Health Emergency Management Bureau in coordinating disaster medical response efforts and information management.

CONCLUSION: This study underlines the importance of effective communication, and multisectoral coordination, to generate reliable data and thus, facilitate resource allocation for disaster medical response.

BACKGROUND: Mass gatherings (MG) are events that draw together a large number of people in one or several occasions happening in single or multiple places for a definite period of time. These can lead to different public health risks through exposure to infectious diseases, trauma, and environmental factors. The Philippine Department of Health (DOH) in 2015 participated in special planned events that constituted mass gatherings namely the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, the Black Nazarene procession, and the Papal Visit.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to describe the different health risks arising from the three (3) identified mass gathering events in the Philippines in 2015 and relate them to public health preparedness.

METHODS: This was a descriptive study of the health risks arising from the MG events. Sources of data were reports submitted by deployed medical teams to the Operations Center (Opcen) that closely monitored the MG.

RESULTS: The study found infectious causes, trauma, temperature-related conditions, and noncommunicable diseases to be the important categories of health risks in the specified mass gatherings. These validated the common health risk categories observed in previously well-studied mass gatherings.

CONCLUSION: The study highlighted important health risks and factors for consideration in public health preparedness for mass gatherings in terms of appropriate and effective public health strategies that should be established to minimize health risks and reduce health system impacts of mass gatherings.

Through the Declaration of Montevideo in 2011, the World Medical Association suggested that doctors worldwide should be trained in basic disaster response regardless of their specialty. The Haiti earthquake in 2010, which had the highest number of foreign medical team dispatched from all over the world, proved that untrained and disorganized team only brought confusion. This event led the World Health Organization to develop the ‘Classification and Minimum Standards for Foreign Medical Teams in Sudden Onset Disasters ’ in 2013. This guideline will become the standard for organizing an international emergency medical team. We should be able to provide high standard of care through field hospital set up and continuous training of disaster medicine specialists.
Disaster Medicine* ; Disasters* ; Earthquakes ; Emergencies* ; Haiti ; Mobile Health Units ; Specialization ; Standard of Care ; World Health Organization

Education and training of disaster medicine are the most important part of disaster management. There are so many training and education curriculum all over the world. However education courses based upon core competencies of disaster medicine are lacking. There is still a need to define the specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes that must be mastered by specialized professionals. Standardized core competencies for acute care medical personnel such as emergency department nurses, emergency physicians, and out-of-hospital emergency medical services personnel are needed to ensure that effective emergency medical response can be provided efficiently during all types of disasters. Therefore education and training curriculum of other countries were reviewed in this article.
Curriculum ; Disaster Medicine* ; Disasters* ; Education* ; Emergencies ; Emergency Medical Services ; Emergency Service, Hospital ; Mental Competency

Disasters are unpredictable and unavoidable. The definition of disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses that exceed the ability of affected society to cope using only its own resources. Disaster medicine is a discipline resulting from combination of emergency medicine and disaster management. The field of disaster medicine involves the study of subject matter from multiple medical disciplines, and disaster medicine presents unique ethical situations not seen in other areas of medicine. Disaster can be classified into two categories, natural disaster and manmade disaster, each type of disaster has its own characteristics. Disaster management has a cycle of 4 activities, preparedness, response, recovery, and prevention/mitigation. Disaster medicine specialists have a role in each part of this cycle. To achieve effective disaster response, the National Disaster Life Support Foundation suggests the DISASTER Paradigm(TM), which consists of detection, incident command, safety and security, assess hazards, support, triage and treatment, evacuation, and recovery.
Disaster Medicine ; Disaster Planning ; Disasters* ; Emergencies ; Emergency Medicine ; Humans ; Mass Casualty Incidents ; Specialization ; Triage

Disaster medicine and emergency medicine are common in many parts, particularly in the acute stage of disaster, so the role of emergency medicine in disaster is very important. For adequate disaster preparation and response, interest and investment to emergency medical care for emergency and safety issues that deal with most important thing, life conservation, must be made in the future. Specifically, support to the emergency medical centers as disaster base hospitals is necessary for emergency medicine to perform adequate roles in disaster, and it is also necessary to assign the role to the hospital in the area that holds the local risk factors. Because of the poor preparedness for nuclear, chemical or biological disaster in Korea, the important things are the preparation and establishment of infrastructure based on equipment and facilities, related to special type disasters. So the government should support the emergency medical system for the adequate response to disasters as well as individual emergency care.
Disaster Medicine ; Disasters* ; Emergencies* ; Emergency Medical Services ; Emergency Medicine* ; Investments ; Korea ; Risk Factors

No abstract available.
Disaster Medicine* ; Disasters* ; Korea*