The Kurdish refugee crisis--what have we learned?

The Disaster Unit of the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) responded to the Kurdish refugee crisis in March 1991, with the early dispatch and air dropping of material aid by the RAF. Their chief medical adviser was seconded to coordinate inputs in Turkey and later on the Turkish/Iraqi border. The Minister for Overseas Development herself made an on-site assessment of the scale of the problem in Iran. The international section of the Department of Health instructed its adviser on emergency medicine to explore the feasibility of an NHS response to the crisis. Teams in Manchester, Edinburgh, London, Oxford and Salford confirmed their willingness and ability to respond. The Medic 1 team of accident and emergency doctors and nurses from Edinburgh worked in the safe haven camps on the Turkish/ Iraqi border as part of the wider relief effort to the area. The South Manchester Accident Rescue Team (SMART), meanwhile, after consultation with the ODA, made contact with the Iranian embassy in London and received a request for a medical team on the Iran/Iraq border. With ODA financial support SMART sent a team of six A&E physicians, six nurses, six paramedics and 7.5 t of supplies and equipment to Tehran. The team arrived at 3.00 a.m. local time on Friday 3RD May 1991. The customs warehouse was testimony to the folly of dispatching aid without someone to accompany it to its final destination. With no-one who could recognize it, vouch for it and sign all the papers, it lay by the tonne, sitting on shelves or rotting on the tarmac. The Iranian Red Crescent forwarded the team to Bakteran where it was felt most medical help was needed. In Bakteran other foreign workers were complaining they were being held in the towns and only allowed to visit the refugee camps after long waits for papers and then only for day trips. However, these teams all appeared to be assessors of some kind. The South Manchester Accident Rescue