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What is a Disaster?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Adriaan J. H. Korver
Adriaan J. H. Korver
Affiliation:
Netherlands Red Cross Society National Headquarters, The Hague, The Netherlands.
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Extract

One of the most serious bottle-necks in the discussions concerning the medical disaster relief is the lack of any uniformity of the concept “Disaster.”

In the summary of the International Congress on Disaster Medicine (Mainz 1977) (1) we can read “The definition of a disaster. This question hung over many of the discussions of the Congress. Several speakers drew attention to the fundamental differences between relief services for an air or train crash and those for an earthquake or flood. Armed conflicts can present different problems again which in themselves vary enormously. While numbers of victims were submitted as a basis for one classification, numbers alone are not enough.”

Type
Selected papers from the 4th World Congress on Emergency and Disaster Medicine, Brighton, United Kingdom, June, 1985
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 2 , Issue 1-4: Contributions from the Second International Assembly on Emergency Medical Services-Focus on Disaster, Baltimore, Md., USA, 1986 and 4th World Congress on Emergency and Disaster Medicine Brighton, U.K. June, 1985 , 1986 , pp. 152 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1986

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References

REFERENCES

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