Disaster medicine: current status and future directions of emergency medical team for overseas disaster crisis

Through the Declaration of Montevideo in 2011, the World Medical Association suggested that doctors worldwide should be trained in basic disaster response regardless of their specialty. The Haiti earthquake in 2010, which had the highest number of foreign medical team dispatched from all over the world, proved that untrained and disorganized team only brought confusion. This event led the World Health Organization to develop the ‘Classification and Minimum Standards for Foreign Medical Teams in Sudden Onset Disasters ’ in 2013. This guideline will become the standard for organizing an international emergency medical team. We should be able to provide high standard of care through field hospital set up and continuous training of disaster medicine specialists.

Is registration of foreign medical teams needed for disaster response? Findings from the response to Typhoon Haiyan

We conducted a descriptive study on the deployment of all FMTs to Haiyan-affected areas in the Philippines from 8 November 2013 to 30 June 2014. An FMT coordinating body was established at the national level which comprised representatives from the DOH and the World Health Organization (WHO) Representative Office in the Philippines. This team disseminated the new registration form to all FMTs that had contacted the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office, WHO Representative Office in the Philippines and the DOH from 10 November (two days after the typhoon made landfall). All FMTs were required to register regardless of their location inside or outside the Philippines at the time.