Improving Effective Surgical Delivery in Humanitarian Disasters: Lessons from Haiti
- نوع فایل : کتاب
- زبان : انگلیسی
- مؤلف : Kathryn Chu1*, Christopher Stokes2, Miguel Trelles2, Nathan Ford3
- چاپ و سال / کشور: 2011
Description
The humanitarian response to major disasters is often marred by duplication and fragmentation, resulting in insufficient resources and services reaching the victims [1]. This is particularly critical when it comes to surgical care in mass disasters, both because the impact of surgical services on mortality requires a rapid response, and because surgical teams are often the most difficult to recruit. In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Me´decins sans Frontie`res (MSF) deployed the largest surgical team in the organization’s 40-year history: in 10 weeks, over 55,000 patients were treated and over 4,000 surgical interventions performed. The overall combined response was perhaps one of the largest non-conflict humanitarian surgical efforts in human history. However, the delivery of care was fraught with supply delays, a lack of appropriately experienced surgeons and anesthesiologists, and challenges in coordinating with other agencies—governmental, military, and non-governmental— whose priorities and motives did not always agree. We highlight some challenges from this recent experience and propose some ways forward to support an effective surgical humanitarian response to future major disasters.
