J Korean Med Assoc.  2017 Feb;60(2):149-155. 10.5124/jkma.2017.60.2.149.

Disaster medicine: current status and future directions of emergency medical team for overseas disaster crisis

• Choa M
• Noh J
• Chung HS

• KMID: 2368925
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2017.60.2.149

Abstract

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.

Keyword

Disasters; Foreign medical teams; Emergency medical teams

MeSH Terms

Disaster Medicine*
Disasters*
Earthquakes
Emergencies*
Haiti
Mobile Health Units
Specialization
Standard of Care
World Health Organization

Figure

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  Figure 1 Top 10 number of reported natural disasters. Reproduced from Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. 2013 Disasters in numbers [Internet]. Brussels: Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters; 2014[5].

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