The first Humanity First Medical Disaster Response Course, March 13 th 15 th, 2009 Dr Nadeem Ahmad Afzal PR &

; Communications, Humanity First Medical Department Humanity First held its first disaster response course on March 13th to 15th, 2009. This was organised in conjunction with the Leicester division of the UK International Search and Rescue (ISAR) Team who shared their vast knowledge and field experience as part of Humanity First teaching Faculty. This course aims to give the delegates the closest possible experience of providing medical care in a disaster environment. Importantly, the Humanity First course does not duplicate the specialist acute life support courses like ALS, ATLS, APLS and PALS in the UK. We aim to build on basic core resuscitation knowledge applying this in a disaster hit area. Resuscitation in a controlled environment like the NHS Accident and Emergency Department is different to providing life support by the roadside, medical camp or next to a destroyed building and this has been reflected in this unique course. The 3 day course was attended by 12 attendees with a 2:1 ratio of attendee to faculty. 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. Lecturers included experienced specialists in surgery, medicine, pre-hospital care, paediatrics, public health and logistics. Aspects like disaster classification and response coordination, safety and security, briefing the media and inter-agency communication with emergency response colleagues were included in both the taught and exercise components. The delegates experienced working in teams, managed transport of their teams to disaster zones, set up tents, and managed medical camps learning about general management and specific treatment applying principles of improvisation and prioritising therapies. Some examples of these mock scenarios included 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 participated in the course to assist running these scenarios playing the part of injured patients requiring critical, urgent and less urgent medical care. This proved to be an exciting and informative weekend for the delegates and trainers alike. The trainers have worked hard to develop the Humanity First Training Manual and were delighted to announce the launch of the first edition with the Course. We aim to run this course regularly training personnel and teams in the UK and internationally. It is planned to take the course to high-risk areas like Indonesia and Bangladesh where disasters are frequent and we are

planning to work with local emergency disaster response teams to improve the overall relief effort. In addition to providing training, the course is used as an assessment tool of the suitability of attendees to be included as a member of a Humanity First Disaster Response Team and candidates are tested on various aspects throughout the intensive three day course.