Disaster medicine and public health preparedness
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Disaster Med Public Health Prep · Aug 2013
Assessment of the health impacts of the 2011 summer floods in Brisbane.
To assess the effects of the 2011 floods in Brisbane, Australia, on residents' physical and mental health. ⋯ The 2011 Brisbane floods had significant impact on the physical and psychosocial health of residents. Improved support strategies may need to be integrated into existing disaster management programs to reduce flood-related health impacts, particularly those related to mental health.
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Disaster Med Public Health Prep · Aug 2013
Competency-based standardized training for humanitarian providers: making humanitarian assistance a professional discipline.
The number of people employed in international humanitarian care is growing at a yearly rate of 6%. The demand for better coordination, accountability, and training has led to a need for standardized humanitarian training programs for providers. ⋯ This report explores the competencies specific to humanitarian training that are practice- and application-oriented, teachable, and measurable. Competency-based, standardized programs will be used to select humanitarian workers deployed in future crises and to guide the professionalization of this discipline.
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Disaster Med Public Health Prep · Aug 2013
Emergency response to mass casualty incidents in Lebanon.
The emergency response to mass casualty incidents in Lebanon lacks uniformity. Three recent large-scale incidents have challenged the existing emergency response process and have raised the need to improve and develop incident management for better resilience in times of crisis. We describe some simple emergency management principles that are currently applied in the United States. These principles can be easily adopted by Lebanon and other developing countries to standardize and improve their emergency response systems using existing infrastructure.