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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Disasters and development: Part I. Relationships between disasters and development.

This module introduces a paradigm for understanding the disaster/development interface. Specifically, the module asserts that disasters and development are linked closely in that disasters can both destroy development initiatives and create development opportunities, and that development schemes can both increase and decrease vulnerability. The module consists of four parts: Part One introduces these concepts and discusses how disasters can vary from one type of hazard to another, as well as from one type of economic condition to another. Part Two develops the paradigm in depth, and provides case examples to amplify the points made in the text. Part Three describes and discusses different methods and tools for analyzing decisions for potential investment of resources, and should enhance the reader's capacity to analyze the mitigational benefits of development alternatives in both the pre- and post-disaster context. Part Four conceptualizes the role of UN agencies, NGOs, and the affected communities in promoting development based on the concepts discussed in the module. This training module, Disasters and Development, initially was designed to introduce this aspect of disaster management to an audience of UN organization professionals who form disaster management teams, as well as to government counterpart agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and donors. The educational process has been designed to increase the audience's awareness of the nature and management of disasters, in order to lead to better performance in disaster preparedness and response. The content has been written by experts in the field of disaster management and in general follows the UNDP/UNDRO Disaster Management Manual and its principles, procedures, and terminology.

Costs and Cost Analysis↗
PubMed1993

Disaster assessment: the emergency health evaluation of a population affected by a disaster.

In the past decade, interest in the operational and epidemiologic aspects of disaster medicine has grown dramatically. State, local, and federal organizations have created vast emergency response networks capable of responding to disasters, while hospitals have developed extensive disaster plans to address mass casualty situations. Increasingly, the US armed forces have used both their ability to mobilize quickly and their medical expertise to provide humanitarian assistance rapidly during natural and man-made disasters. However, the critical component of any disaster response is the early conduct of a proper assessment to identify urgent needs and to determine relief priorities for an affected population. Unfortunately, because this component of disaster management has not kept pace with other developments in emergency response and technology, relief efforts often are inappropriate, delayed, or ineffective, thus contributing to increased morbidity and mortality. Therefore, improvements in disaster assessment remain the most pressing need in the field of disaster medicine.

Disaster Planning↗
PubMed2002

Nutritional response to the 1998 Bangladesh flood disaster: Sphere minimum standards in disaster response.

In this study we use a cross-sectional survey to evaluate the nutritional response to the 1998 Bangladesh Flood Disaster by 15 relief agencies using standards developed by the Sphere Project. The Sphere Project is a recent attempt by agencies around the world to establish universal minimum standards for the purpose of ensuring quality and accountability in disaster response. The main outcomes measured were resources allocated to disaster relief types of relief activities and percentage of agencies meeting selected Sphere food aid and nutrition indicators. Although the process of nutritional response was measured, specific nutritional and health outcomes were not assessed. This review found that self-reported disaster and nutritional resources varied widely between implementing agencies, ranging from US $58,947 to $15,908,712. The percentage of resources these agencies allocated to food aid and nutritional response also varied, ranging from approximately 6 to 99 per cent of total resources. Agencies met between 8 and 83 per cent of the specific Sphere indicators which were assessed Areas in which performance was poor included preliminary nutritional analysis; beneficiary participation and feedback; disaster preparedness during non-emergency times; monitoring of local markets and impact assessment. Agencies were generally successful in areas of core humanitarian response, such as targeting the vulnerable (83 per cent) and monitoring and evaluating the process of disaster response (75 per cent). The results here identify both strengths and gaps in the quality of humanitarian response in developing nations such as Bangladesh. However, they also raise the question of implementing a rights-based approach to disaster response in nations without a commitment to meeting positive human rights in non-disaster times.

Altruism↗
PubMed1991

The St Croix disaster and the National Disaster Medical System.

The National Disaster Medical System was designed to respond to a catastrophic disaster by creating a group of specially trained civilian disaster medical assistance teams. The teams would be transported to the periphery of the event to triage, stabilize, and then prepare victims for evacuation to facilities elsewhere in the United States that have agreed in advance to accept such patients. Hurricane Hugo's devastation in St Croix offered the first opportunity to test the system. The event was an example of a type of medical disaster that resulted in a sudden reduction in medical resources without a great increase in casualties. Background information and operation of the New Mexico disaster medical assistance team are presented with a clinical profile of the patients seen during the disaster. We describe the first actual deployment of a disaster medical assistance team and the issues that must be addressed before future deployments.

Disaster Planning↗
PubMed1995

Disaster medicine: current assessment and blueprint for the future. SAEM Disaster Medicine White Paper Subcommittee.

Emergency services for disaster-affected populations require the application of out-of-hospital planning, curative acute medical skills, and public health principles. SAEM can play an important role in promoting the research and educational agendas for disaster medicine through its network of EM educators at academic health centers. Testing of disaster medicine principles as part of the EM certification process will emphasize the importance of disaster medicine in the overall training of EPs. Postgraduate fellowships in disaster medicine also should be promoted and closely linked to disaster response organizations. Overall professional training must encompass the many facets described in this paper to prepare physicians to meet the challenges of disaster medicine.

Disaster Planning↗
PubMed1987

Catastrophic disasters and the design of disaster medical care systems.

The National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) is aimed at medical care needs resulting from catastrophic earthquakes, which may cause thousands of deaths and injuries. Other geophysical events may cause great mortality, but leave few injured survivors. Weather incidents, technological disasters, and common mass casualty incidents cause much less mortality and morbidity. Catastrophic disasters overwhelm the local medical care system. Supplemental care is provided by disaster relief forces; this care should be adapted to prevalent types of injuries. Most care should be provided at the disaster scene through supplemental medical facilities, while some can be provided by evacuating patients to distant hospitals. Medical response teams capable of stabilizing, sorting, and holding victims should staff supplemental medical facilities. The NDMS program includes hospital facilities, evacuation assets, and medical response teams. The structure and capabilities of these elements are determined by the medical care needs of the catastrophic disaster situation.

Disasters↗
PubMed1998

[The disaster preparedness concerning personnel at the hospitals in the Disaster Preparedness Region II: Viborg, Ringkjøbing and Aarhus counties].

The aim of this investigation was to describe the disaster preparedness concerning hospital staff members in Viborg, Ringkjøbing and Arhus county, and to describe the outcome of the disaster medicine-courses given in the region--in theory as well as practice. In the region a questionnaire was sent to the chief doctor and chief nurse for the involved departments, and a personal questionnaire was sent to all the doctors and nurses in the region, who had participated in one or more courses in disaster medicine during the period 1990-1995. Of the total number of doctors at the involved departments, 7% of the residents, 29% of the senior residents and 56% of the consultants had taken a course in disaster medicine, as had 33% of the nurses. Only 15% had taken more than one course, and as few as 2% had had a follow-up course to the primary one given in the region. Forty-one percent had used their acquired knowledge either in theory or practice: 55% for educational purposes, 11% for disaster planning and 12% for buying equipment for the hospital. In general an easier access to follow-up is desired, and there seems to be a need to give more consideration to the priorities of the individual departments concerning the selection of participants to the courses in disaster medicine.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1982

Community perceptions of natural disasters and post-disaster mental health services.

This research was designed to examine the cognitive and affective responses of residential dwellers in the aftermath of a natural disaster (a flood). In a 2 X 3 factorial design, the effects of fear (High, Medium, and Low) and sex on perceptions of the disaster were assessed. The results indicated that respondents who were highly fearful of the disaster were more likely than moderate or low fear respondents to believe that: a) additional flooding would occur in their vicinity, and b) that they resided closer to the flood zone than they actually did. The policy implications of the results suggested that post-disaster mental health services might have to be extended to include residents of geographical areas not directly affected by natural or man-made disasters.

Arizona↗
PubMed1997

Tools for evaluating disasters: preliminary results of some hundreds of disasters.

Epidemiologic research of disasters is hampered by a lack of uniformity and standardization in describing these events. By applying a classification and scoring system, which recently became available, an analysis could be performed of 416 disasters from the past 40 years. Only 79 references were useful in obtaining reliable figures for a scoring on the Disaster Severity Scale (DSS). The various disaster types show a relationship between the DSS-scoring on the one hand, and the severity factor (S) and the number of dead and wounded (n) on the other. It is concluded that the classification and scoring system used could serve as a tool for evaluating the majority of disasters. A small improvement of this system is recommended.

Disaster Planning↗
PubMed1991

Psychological impairment in the wake of disaster: the disaster-psychopathology relationship.

The present review examines the relationship between disaster occurrence and psychopathology outcome for 52 studies that used quantitative measures of such a relationship. Descriptive and inferential techniques were used to examine relationships among four sets of variables: (a) the characteristics of the victim population, (b) the characteristics of the disaster, (c) study methodology, and (d) the type of psychopathology. A small but consistently positive relationship between disasters and psychopathology was found. The distribution of effect-size estimates was significantly heterogeneous, and this heterogeneity was partially accounted for by methodological characteristics of the research. When controlling for methodology, victim and disaster characteristics also contributed variance to the disaster-psychopathology relationship. Implications for future research are outlined in view of these results.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1997

Disasters, the media and social structures: a typology of credibility hierarchy persistence based on a newspaper coverage of the Love Canal and six other disasters.

The starting-point of this paper is the assumption that credibility and the right to be heard are differentially distributed in any social system and therefore a 'hierarchy of credibility' exists. To test this, the media coverage of the Love Canal, New York, hazardous waste landfill disaster and six other disasters was examined to determine if this hierarchy exists in all cases. A hierarchy of credibility emphasising the views of established news sources with routine and habitual access to the media was demonstrated in the majority of events examined However, the Love Canal disaster was one of two where this hierarchy was disrupted due to a number of factors. These included the contentious or political nature of the event, its duration, the extent of competition of credibility and coverage among news sources, the extent of information shortage, the type of news medium, the degree of sympathetic and representational salience of victims and the extent to which they organized and achieved status as 'newsmakers'. Building on disaster research, a model of the operation of the credibility hierarchy in coverage of disasters is presented and discussed.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Long-term psychiatric morbidity after a natural disaster. Implications for disaster planners and emergency services.

The prevalence and longitudinal course of post-traumatic stress disorder were studied in a group of 459 firefighters who were exposed to the Ash Wednesday bushfires in South Australia. The main finding, that the level of morbidity four months after the disaster remained almost unchanged at 29 months, indicates the long-term nature of post-traumatic stress disorder. Twenty-nine months after the fire, 21% of the firefighters were continuing to experience imagery of the disaster, in a way that interfered with their lives. The failure of present disaster management plans to recognize the psychological impact of natural disasters and the long-term nature of post-traumatic stress disorder is emphasized, and the need for preventive mental health programmes to minimize such morbidity in the future is discussed.

Australia↗
PubMed1999

It's a disaster: emergency departments' preparation for a chemical incident or disaster.

Nurses in the Accident & Emergency (A&E) Department have a significant role to play in the treatment and resuscitation of victims of a chemical disaster. Chemical disasters are unique because casualties are contaminated. Nursing staff triage casualties and they have direct contact with contaminated patients, before and during decontamination. Consequently they require adequate personal protective equipment and information regarding isolation and decontamination. The use of chemicals has increased since the turn of the century. Hazardous chemical emergencies arise from accidents in production, storage, transportation and the disposal of chemical substances. Their illegal manufacture and use by terrorists makes the likelihood of a chemical disaster with mass casualties in Australia very real. Emergency departments are ill-prepared to deal with this scenario, and very few disaster plans include a comprehensive decontamination component. To achieve an effective response with the best utilisation of resources, it is vital for emergency services personnel and A&E departments to be prepared.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMed2003

A more rational approach to medical disaster management applied retrospectively to the Enschede fireworks disaster, 13 May 2000.

As in any other medical discipline, developments in disaster medicine have occurred. A model for medical disaster management is briefly discussed and then applied retrospectively to the Enschede fireworks disaster (2000). Differences between the theoretical model and the actual situation are shown with respect to the number of casualties, the average severity of injury sustained, the medical rescue capacity, the medical transport capacity and hospital treatment capacity. It was concluded that the proposed model for the management of disasters with traumatically injured victims worked adequately.

Ambulances↗