Medical Evacuation
Written by Anam Hussain
Definition:
Evacuation is defined as a process of moving people from a dangerous place to somewhere safe, or removing something from one place and moving it to another. Medical evacuation is required when disaster strikes in order to move people away from AOD that contain an imminent threat, an ongoing threat or a hazard to the lives and properties of people. From a medical point of view, evacuation is a forced activity of moving casualties not only to assure a safer place for them but because of the scarcity of medical means and capabilities and to provide them with more adequate and the best possible treatment.
There are 3 types of evacuation: Spontaneous, organised and directed
- Spontaneous Evacuation:
- Takes place during the impact phase of a disaster
- It is when all those who are not severely injured or physically affected by the disaster’s DF affects, try and escape as rapidly and as far from the AOD, they possibly can.
- This evacuation is not organised and so sometimes, people cannot escape because they are not aware of the extent of the AOD its boundaries, frantically fleeing of crowds of people can cause some to trample on another etc
- Organised evacuation:
- Is performed during the response phase
- Involves evacuation performed by search and rescue teams of two groups of casualties. First group are those with life-threatening, severe injuries incapable of moving and those because of psychological reasons as well as those who were simply trapped
- Casualties are directed from the AOD to forward medical stations (FMS) to receive medical care
- Non-injured people are directed to the nearest safest location
- Directed evacuation
- Is the process of moving casualties from FMSs to a higher healthcare facility to ensure provision of definitive treatment.
- Due to the disparity between available and required medical means and capabilities, after primary medical triage has been performed, casualties are directed to the most appropriate condition medical installation for their injuries.
- This type of evacuation is managed by medical teams and the categories of evacuees are:
- All that require ambulatory care (T3) are directed to the nearest available medical facility (GP, medical centres etc)
- All that require further treatment (T1/T2/T4) are evacuated with sanitary transport to the nearest hospital with the capabilities of providing the casualties with definitive treatment.