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The Feasibility of Prehospital Medical Response Teams for Foreign Disaster Assistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Terry Abrams
Terry Abrams
Affiliation:
Staff Development and Technical Services Division, Calgary EMS Department, P.O. Box 2100, Station M, Calgary, Alberta Canada T2P2M5
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Extract

Disasters are defined as events caused either by natural or technological occurrences, that overwhelm the resources that are immediately available to manage or mitigate the impact of the event. Disasters, by their very nature, are newsmakers. With the improvement in telecommunications, the barriers of distance are reduced to the extent that the people of the world all are members of what Marshall MacLuhan called the “global village.” It now is a common practice to watch the effects of a disaster on the other side of the world, from the safety and comfort of the living room, live on television. The capacity to empathize with the victims, and to feel almost a part of the incident, results in tremendous public attention and an urging of governments, not directly affected by the event, to get involved and “do something!”

Type
Controversy
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 241 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1990

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