The Establishment and Evaluation of Emergency Medical Station Module for Earthquake Disaster in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Nai-Jen Liang, 梁乃仁
• Other Authors: Yaw-Tang Shih
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/32693693664197600221

博士 === 國防醫學院 === 生命科學研究所 === 89 === Due to the unique geographic location at the junction of Philippine and Eurasian plates as well as at the Pan-Pacific volcanic rim, Taiwan is naturally susceptible to the attack of earthquake. The records of the Central Weather Bureau indicate that there are 2200 times of earthquake in average annually and about 200 times of those are sensible in scale. According to Taiwan’s last 100-year history, no one type of natural disaster other than earthquake can cause more than 10,000 casualties in a single attack. Although a great advancement of seismographic technology has been made in last several decades, the current high-tech equipment available still fail to accurately predict the time, location, and magnitude of an on-coming earthquake. Before any precise techniques of quake prediction become available, a well-prepared emergency response plan is still the key element for us to reduce the severity of earthquake disaster. The experience of 921 Chi-Chi earthquake that the need of emergency medical care by the casualties had placed tremendous pressure on the medical teams indicated that a thorough study on the special plan of emergency medical supports to casualties in a natural disaster is the critical step to reduce their mortality and morbidity. The main purposes of this study are to: a.Establish the database of epidemiology of 921 earthquake and examine the association of mortality and morbidity of casualties. b.Establish an emergency medical station module for casualties in an earthquake disaster. c.Validate the module. Methods: a.Collect and analyze the epidemiological database of 921 earthquake to estimate the operational need of emergency medical care. b.Formulate the emergency medical station module through the epidemiological analysis, focus group discussion, panel discussion, and article review. c.Examine the applicability of the module by using panel questionnaire process. d.Evaluate the efficiency and capacity of the established module by using table top drill among Army’s medical units. Results of the study indicated that the primary module of emergency medical station was successfully established and available for future use in earthquake disaster response plan.