Clinic entrance interviews: a new method to assess needs after a sudden impact disaster

BACKGROUND After a Sudden impact disasters (SID), relief workers and coordinators require information on the size and location of the affected population as well as the character and magnitude of their immediate needs. METHODS The study was performed in the mountainous Bagh district, a part of the autonomous state of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted daily at either of the three health centres or the district hospital in which MSF was working. RESULTS The MSF facility-based survey results on mortality and injury in Bagh Tehsil corresponded to those from the community-based Army survey. This indicates that regular selection of consecutive arrivals at the entrance of a health facility may provide a fairly geographically representative population sample in a SID context. Our findings suggest that the sample was large enough to provide useful estimates on the main pattern of post-earthquake needs in the study area.