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Emergency with Resiliency Equals Efficiency – Challenges of an EMT-3 in Nepal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2018

Avraham Yitzhak ,
Ofer Merin ,
Jonathan Halevy  and
Bader Tarif
Avraham Yitzhak*
Affiliation:
Israel Defense Forces, Medical Corps, Tel Aviv, Israel
Ofer Merin
Affiliation:
Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel
Jonathan Halevy
Affiliation:
Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel
Bader Tarif
Affiliation:
Israel Defense Forces, Medical Corps, Tel Aviv, Israel
*
Correspondence: Col. Avraham Yitzhak, MD, MHA Surgeon General of the Southern Command Medical Corps, Southern Command Yosef Serlin St. 12 Beer Sheva, Israel E-mail: ayitzhak@gmail.com
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Abstract

The 7.8 MW (moment magnitude scale) earthquake that hit Nepal on April 25, 2015 caused significant casualties and serious damage to infrastructure.

The Israeli Emergency Medical Team (IEMT; later verified as EMT-3) was deployed 80 hours after the earthquake. A Forward Disaster Scout Team (FDST) that was dispatched to the disaster area a few hours after the disaster relayed pre-deployment information.

The EMT staff was comprised of 42 physicians. A total of 1,668 patients were treated. The number of non-trauma cases increased as the days went by. The hospitalization rate was 31%. Wound debridement procedures were the most common operations performed.

YitzhakA, MerinO, HalevyJ, TarifB. Emergency with Resiliency Equals Efficiency – Challenges of an EMT-3 in Nepal. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2018;33(6):673–677.

Keywords

earthquakeemergency medical teamIDFNepalType 3 EMT
Type
Field Report
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 33 , Issue 6 , December 2018 , pp. 673 - 677
Copyright
© World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2018 

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Footnotes

Conflicts of interest: none

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