In the last few decades, we have witnessed global disasters that rendered national medical systems helpless. A few examples are the tsunami in southeast Asia, and earthquakes in Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, and India. 1–8 A large-scale disaster occurs when a nation cannot cope with the tragedy by itself and needs help from other nations. This is due to a lack of resources in face of the s...

Background: A disaster, as a serious disruption in the functioning of society, may cause extensive damage. Following a disaster, the demand for healthcare increases, and people rush to healthcare centers. In such situations, health staff and medical services play an important role. As a result, people’s knowledge, attitude, and practice toward disaster preparedness in the workplace play an impo...

BACKGROUND Cases of emerging infectious diseases, including H5N1 influenza, H7N9 influenza, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, have been reported in recent years, and the threat of pandemic outbreaks persists. In Japan, primary care is the frontline against emerging infectious diseases in communities. Although the importance of pandemic preparedness in primary care has been highlighted previ...

Introduction: Hospitals are the first-line care providers in natural disasters. Nurses, as one of the critical health professional groups, require adequate peroration for responding to natural disasters. Due attention has to be paid to various teaching methods to improve the level of nurses’ preparedness.  Objective: This study compared the effect of lecturing and lecturing-tabletop exercise m...

Background and Objective: Hospitals play an important role in protecting the health and survival of people during disasters. Despite the development of risk management programs worldwide in recent years, hospital preparedness in disasters is low and one reason for that is the lack of hospital standards for disaster preparedness. This study aims to develop hospital accreditation standards for ho...

OBJECTIVES To measure physical assets in Australasian hospitals required for the management of mass casualties as a result of terrorism or natural disasters. DESIGN AND SETTING A cross-sectional survey of Australian and New Zealand hospitals. PARTICIPANTS All emergency department directors of Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM)-accredited hospitals, as well as private and non...

BACKGROUND Early warning and robust estimation of influenza burden are critical to inform hospital preparedness and operational, treatment, and vaccination policies. Methods to enhance influenza-like illness (ILI) surveillance are regularly reviewed. We investigated the use of hospital staff 'influenza-like absences' (hospital staff-ILA), i.e. absence attributed to colds and influenza, to impro...

Introduction A sudden surge in hospital admissions in public hospital during influenza peak season has been a challenge to healthcare and manpower planning. In Hong Kong, the timing of influenza peak seasons are variable and early short-term indication of possible surge may facilitate preparedness which could be translated into strategies such as early discharge or reallocation of extra hospita...