Acute natural disaster relief by role of military medicine

Beuy Joob, Viroj Wiwanitkit

1Sanitation 1 Medical Academic Center, Bangkhae, Bangkok Thailand

2Visiting Professor, Hainan Medical University, China; visiting professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Nis, Serbia; adjunct professor, Joseph Ayobabalola University, Nigeria

Acute natural disaster relief by role of military medicine

Beuy Joob1*, Viroj Wiwanitkit2

1Sanitation 1 Medical Academic Center, Bangkhae, Bangkok Thailand

2Visiting Professor, Hainan Medical University, China; visiting professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Nis, Serbia; adjunct professor, Joseph Ayobabalola University, Nigeria

1. Introduction

The natural disaster is a totally unwanted event that can occur anywhere. The disaster usually causes several damages, deaths and economical losses. The management of natural disaster is an interesting topic. In each natural disaster, the unit that has good team and power is required for correspondence to episode. An important unit in any country is the military. The role of military medicine in relieving of natural disaster is very important[1,2]. Basically, the medical personnel in military medical team have to play several roles including treatment of the patients (both at disaster site and hospital), evacuation, referring of the cases, prevention of outbreak of diseases, disease surveillance, rehabilitation, communication linkage and infrastructure reconstruction of the disaster area. The successful management is usually derived by good collaboration between civilian and military[3,4]. Dowlen et al proposed that“issues of collaboration and accountability are seen as key themes of disaster response, within which the military can have a role, but which needs to be carefully administered in order to avoid an inappropriate response with an associated political fallout[5]”. In additional, the international team work for corresponding to the very big natural disaster is also very important[6].

There are many reports on the role of military in management of natural disaster. For example, there are many reports on military role for management of disaster due to Hurricane[6-7]. For many cases, the military team play important role to combat the difficulties in post -disaster period. Focusing on earthquake, military can also well act. In an Iranian earthquake disaster, special role in search and rescue missions could be shown[8]. Focusing on the well-known Haiti earthquake, many international military teams enrolled in this big disaster[9-11]. A US team shared an interesting experience on surgery at site and mentioned for the need of systematic planning to correspond the problem[9]. In addition, the Israel military team also proposed an interesting concept fort“appropriate planning, training, operational versatility, and adjustment of therapeutic guidelines according to a constantly changing situation[10]”. Considering the consequence disaster following earthquake, the tsunami, there are also many reports. Since the tsunami is usually a very big disaster, the international team is needed. The good example is the recent Fukushima tsunami[12] and Southeast Asian tsunami[13]. Fitzsimons et al. noted for the important concerns on “initial response, medical and cultural planning, logistical support, procedure, and lessons learned[13]”. Concerning the floods, the military role can be seen in the big episode. The military team can well support the local facilities[14]. Burke proposed that the awareness on “roles and functions of health specialties, facilitate the identification of critical gaps during deployments, and provide personnel with the knowledge and skills needed to address them” are required for the members of the team to correspond the problem[15]. For the most recent big flood, the Thailand flood, the local military team also greatly contributed to relief of the disaster. As a conclusion, strong military plays important role in defense in general situation and also have a great contribution to combat with the“natural disaster”.

Conflict of interest statement

We declare that we have no conflict of interest

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ment heading

10.1016/S2221-6189(14)60037-8

*Corresponding author: Beuy Joob, Sanitation 1 Medical Academic Center, Bangkhae, Bangkok Thailand.

E-mail: beuyjoob@hotmail.com