Disaster Medicine
Disaster Medicine is the collaborative application of various health disciplines to the prevention, preparedness, response to and recovery from health problems arising from a disaster, such as COVID-19. This is achieved in cooperation with all agencies and other disciplines.
Managing a pandemic within a declared State of Disaster requires the application of all principles and concepts of disaster medicine. This is a specialist discipline building on knowledge, experience and international lessons learned of medical experiences in events that requires extra ordinary resources. It must however not be confused with the much broader Disaster Management.
The Disaster Medicine specialist is, in the same way as the Infectious Disease specialist, the key advisor to the Commander, commanding the outbreak.
C – Command
Establish effective medical command and control structure, within the Incident Command System.
S – Safety
Continuously ensure guidance for safety and protection of all role-players.
C – Communication
Guide communicating within and between the medical command structures and other structures.
A – Assessment
Provide continuous comprehensive assessment of the situation.
T – Triage
Guide coordinated patient flow to optimise utilisation of facilities within the outbreak.
T – Treatment
Analyse capabilities, calculate surge capacity, coordinate structured decanting of facilities and establish additional facilities into a coordinated response, including guiding the planning of temporary facilities.
T – Transport
Synchronising the triage (screening and testing) process with the treatment capabilities, surge capacity and synchronised decanting.
Right to Care is providing Disaster Medicine expertise at this time, by providing advisors at strategic and operational levels, giving technical advice through guiding documents and providing action plans on how to prepare health care facilities for the pandemic.
COVID-19 Disaster Medicine Guidelines
Technical advice
For bed occupancy monitoring information, click here
For temporary screening information, click here
For hospital surge capacity guidelines, click here
For technical advice on additional hospital facilities, click here
For the Emergency Intensive Care Units Plan, click here
For the COVID-19 Emergency Hospital Facilities, click here
For quarantine measures, click here
For the quarantine facility flow-chart, click here
Action plans
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan 1, click here
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan 2, click here
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan 3, click here
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan – Bed Statistics 4, click here
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan – Safety 5, click here
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan Plan 6, click here
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan Plan 7, click here
For the Disaster Medicine: Hospital Preparation Action Plan Plan 8, click here
