Issues of Liability in Emergency Response
Acknowledgments Thanks to Alysa B. Koloms and Pooja Patel for their contributions to this chapter. Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm. —Hippocrates Organized…
State Disaster Response: Systems and Programs
This chapter outlines key points in understanding state-level emergency response functions within the United States, focusing on medical and public health operations. Emergency response systems vary from country to country….
Local Disaster Response
All disasters are local. Regardless of type, magnitude, or progression, disasters affect communities. Community responders will be the first on the scene and will remain for recovery operations well after…
Disaster Response in Europe
The important goals of disaster and mass casualty incident (MCI) response are to protect and to save life. When a disaster strikes a population, people expect that leaders, local authorities,…
Disaster Response in the United States
Response to emergencies and disasters for the protection of life, health, safety, and the preservation of property is a government responsibility. In the United States, governors, not the president, are…
Ethical Issues in Disaster Medicine
Medical practitioners and health officials train for decades to provide run-of-the-mill health services. How should their choices change in times of disaster, that is, during “a serious disruption of the…
Children and Disaster
Children, along with the elderly and pregnant women, are the most vulnerable populations in disasters. In developing countries, children also make up a disproportionate percentage of the population, as exemplified…
Psychological Impact of Disaster on Displaced Populations and Refugees of Multiple Traumas
This chapter is designed to examine the impacts of disaster on displaced populations and refugees of multiple trauma events. The aims therefore are to highlight the processes of psychological triage,…
Role of Hospitals in a Disaster
By definition, the hospital is an institution providing medical and surgical treatment and nursing care for sick or injured people. The word hospital comes from the Latin hospes , signifying…
Disaster and Climate Change
Acknowledgments The author thanks Kingkarn Waiyanak for the literature search and retrieval and Glenn K. Shingledecker for his help in editing the manuscript. Introduction Climate change, consequent to the phenomenon…
