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Humanity First Medical April 2011 Update. The 4th Humanity First Disaster Response Course.

Training exercises in the fire station

Humanity First 'triage' tent

April 2011
(Vol 2, Issue 4)

Welcome to the Humanity First Medical update. With these updates, we aim to keep you informed about Humanity First medical activities and talk about the latest in news and controversies, in relation to our line of work with these updates. Please visit our website Humanity First Medical for more about our activities, wish to contribute or need to contact the Humanity First Medical team.

The fourth Humanity First Disaster Response Course in Leicester, UK March 25th - 27th, 2011
Humanity First International held its fourth disaster response course on March 25th to 27th, 2011. This was organised in conjunction with the Leicester division of the UK International Search and Rescue (ISAR) Team. The 3 day course was attended by 25 attendees from UK and US and included doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists and logistics people from various backgrounds. The sessions were divided into lecture and exercise components. Lectures were mostly held in mornings with hands on experience engaging in mock scenarios in the afternoons. The 24 faculty members in the March 2011 course include specialists in medicine, surgery, paediatrics, logistics, members of ISAR, and an expert from the WHO. They provided hands on training to the delegates. Many of these trainers have previously been out on disasters as part

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Medical resuscitation lectures on Day 2

of our Disaster response team. The course covers disaster classification and response coordination, safety and security, briefing the media and teaching the importance of inter-agency communication for delivering an effective disaster relief. These principles are incorporated in both the taught and exercise components of the course. The delegates experience to lead and work in teams, managing transport of their teams to disaster zones and setting up tents not only learning about medical management applicable to the field but also about rules of safety and survival, improvising and prioritisating treatments maximising benefit to the patients. Some examples of these mock scenarios include extracting casualties safely from collapsed buildings, managing single and mass casualties brought in by helicopter and treatment of medical conditions seen in a tsunami, earthquake and other disaster scenarios. A number of actors participate in the course to assist running these scenarios playing the part of injured patients requiring critical, urgent and others less urgent medical care. This proved to be an exciting and informative weekend for the delegates and trainers alike. The Humanity First Disaster Response course aims to give the delegates the closest possible experience of providing medical care in a disaster environment. Importantly, the course does not duplicate the specialist acute life support courses like ALS, ATLS, APLS in the UK or PALS /equivalents life support courses in the US and aims to teach application of this knowledge on a campsite in a disaster hit area. Resuscitation in a controlled

The fire and rescue services assisting in the course

After the training exercises on day 3

The fifth Humanity First Disaster Response Course in Dulles, Virginia, USA May 6th - 8th, 2011
The next Humanity First Disaster Response course is planned in Dulles, Virginia, USA. The UK trainers will fly to join the US team to jointly run the course. This would lead to independent Humanity First Disaster Response training centres in the US. It is recommended that delegates read the 'Humanity First Disaster Response manual' before attending the course. The manual contains material

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specifically designed for the course and disaster response and includes details about disasters, principles of safe management of teams followed by medical and surgical management of conditions seen on the field . Delegates may wish to refresh their ABC (resuscitation) knowledge and it is recommended to refer to the current prevalent recommended resuscitation guidelines. For iphone owners the UK resuscitation council guidelines are available as a free app (iResus). This is recommended, as it not only gives the ABC but also demonstrates resuscitation and airway opening with easy to understand pictures. A free 'PALS' app is also available. Please click on the blue icon to visit the US website details. for course

environment like the Accident and Emergency Department is an altogether different deal to providing life support by the roadside, medical camp or next to a destroyed building which is reflected in this unique course.

Group photograph of the partcipants & faculty

In the longer term it is planned to take the course to high-risk areas like Indonesia and Bangladesh where natural disasters are frequent to enable effective local disaster response missions.

The Leicester fire crew

All photographs in this newsletter are copyrighted by Humanity First International (UK)

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