Disaster medicine aims to prevent and respond to devastating events. Health professionals need to understand their role in disaster management to effectively respond when disasters occur. The aim of the study is to assess the knowledge level, preparedness, and the training gaps regarding disaster medicine among health professionals and medical students/interns in Makkah (Mecca) city.

This is an online-based cross-sectional study design conducted in Makkah City. Physicians, nurses, and medical students/interns were included. Continuous variables were reported as means and confidence intervals. While categorical variables were reported as frequencies and percentages. Data were analyzed by Chi-square and Anova test as appropriate.

Of the 651 participants, the mean age was 27.69 (95% CI 28.13 to 27.24) with 360 (55.30%) participants being males. The mean average score of disaster medicine knowledge was 7.90 (95% CI 8.29-7.51) for medical students/interns, 8.12 (95% CI 8.77-7.47) for nurses, and 4.85 (95% CI 5.21-4.49) for physicians (P <0.0001). The majority of participants selected first-aid skills and triage and evacuation as crucial aspects to be covered in learning disaster medicine, 406 (62.4%) and 373 (57.3%) respectively.

In this study, the level of knowledge regarding disaster management is average among the healthcare population. Certain aspects of disaster medicine are needed to be focused on such as first-aid skills and triage and evacuation. Incorporating disaster medicine as part of training programs is a demand.

Disasters can quickly overwhelm a healthcare system’s capacity and exacerbate existing gaps in access to specialty care. The Region 1 RDHRS has developed a disaster telehealth system. This presentation will highlight how a proof of concept developed into a prototype system, and how it is becoming operational. We will elaborate on the barriers of implementing a telehealth system to provide access to acute consultation with disaster-relevant specialists, and the steps the Region 1 RDHRS is taking to develop solutions.

An RDHRS is a tiered system across states and regions created to deliver a more coherent and comprehensive response to health security threats. A key RDHRS capability is providing disaster telehealth services to target gaps in healthcare coverage, allowing providers to access disaster-relevant clinical expertise in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic no-notice event.

The Region 1 RDHRS disaster telehealth system can rapidly mobilize a national pool of volunteer specialists to support overwhelmed local providers at the point of care. This system is flexible to support a range of disasters and easy to navigate without prior training. The system is device-agnostic and functions on existing telecommunication systems without requiring new hardware/software installation.

Operationalizing a telehealth system to deliver acute episodic unscheduled care across state lines is fraught with challenges. We collaborated with various subject matter experts to develop solutions that allow for rapid volunteer verification, training, and mobilization. Despite advances driven by COVID-19, barriers related to license portability, liability protection, and credentialing of volunteer specialists across state lines remain complex. We are developing disaster waivers and template documents that can be rapidly implemented via executive action at state and regional levels.

The Region 1 RDHRS team is collaborating with the other pilot sites within the RDHRS program to develop a unified national disaster telehealth response based on this model.

The KIRAMS establishes radiological emergency institutions and provides training for emergency medical agents. However, because of the uniqueness of radioactive accidents, the current training program has a limitation in the realistic description. Therefore, training programs based on virtual augmented reality technology that can describe radiological emergencies are required. In this study, the contents of practical training for decontamination of radiation-contaminated patients as a part of radiation disaster prevention personnel training using VR simulator are developed.

Environments and devices required for treating patients with complex radiation damage are made visible using VR simulator to enable practical training of techniques and practices that will be required in actual radiation emergencies or training. The VR decontamination training content uses three Point tracking techniques to calculate the location of the head-mounted display device and the hand to visualize the movements. Additionally, Universal Render Pipeline technology was used to develop realistic visualizations of situations.

In this study, VR decontamination treatment practice content was developed, which allows a single trainee to go through the entire treatment process of treating radiation-contaminated patients. The radiation-exposed patient’s treatment process is composed of nine subprocesses, including wearing personal protective equipment, obtaining samples from openings, taking measurements, cleaning contaminated injuries, and so on. A checklist user interface was used to enable trainees to check their progress. The trainee can practice patient treatment with a controller while using VR decontamination treatment content. Additional functions such as narration, sound effects, animation, and so on were added to high educational effects.

In this study, VR decontamination treatment content was developed using VR training simulator to practice the treatment of radiation-contaminated patients. The results of this study will contribute to fostering the workforce response to radiation through efficient education using a VR training simulator, as well as promoting the use of radiation safety regulations.

Some incidents require early deployment of emergency department personnel not designated as disaster medical assistance team (DMAT). Although not as trained as DMAT members, they should be aware of basic disaster response concepts and knowledge. Educating disaster readiness to every healthcare staff in emergency departments would be ideal but it is very costly in both time and expense. To overcome this problem, we tried to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching basic concept and knowledge to non-designated personnel in a short-session and measure the effect.

This study is a before-and-after comparison study. From July 2020 to July 2022, a two-hour education was given to volunteers among doctors, nurses, paramedics and administrative staff working in emergency departments across four hospitals in Korea. Educational sessions consisted of basic disaster concept, pre-deployment DMAT preparations, initial actions required on incident site, key elements of incident response (command, control, safety, communication), and triage. Attendees were given a pretest before the session and another test after the session. Chi-square test and Wilcoxon rank test were used to compare the results.

Total of 105 volunteers participated in the study. Participants were mostly nurses (62.9%) followed by paramedics (23.8%). Overall knowledge level reported to be increased, including knowledge regarding DMAT deployment (29.5% to 93.3%, p<0.001), DMAT personnel (26.7% to 94.3%, p<0.001), DMAT-designated equipment (23.8% to 60.0%, p<0.001), initial response (27.6% to 69.5%, p<0.001) and patient transport priority (74.3% to 94.3%, p<0.001). Questions testing triage and rate of participants answering every question showed improvement with post-test median score of 67% and rate of 1.0% to post-test median score of 100% and rate of 35.2%, respectively (both p<0.001).

Educating non-DMAT personnel in emergency departments with a short session showed significant improvement in basic knowledge of disaster response. It may help institutions with limited resources.

The prime aim of Project for Strengthening the ASEAN Regional Capacity on Disaster Health Management (ARCH Project) is to strengthen the disaster health management (DHM) capacity in the context of personal level, Emergency Medical Team (EMT), and the regional collaboration. The ARCH Project was implemented with reference to international trends of DHM and seeks to contribute to the development of global standards.

The project established the Project Working Groups that consisted of representatives of ASEAN Member States (AMS) to develop standard operating procedures (SOP) for international EMT (I-EMT) coordination. Furthermore, it aimed to organize training sessions along with implementation of the regional collaboration drill (RCD) in accordance with I-EMT minimum requirements and in line with coordination standards set by the WHO.

The ARCH Project developed the SOP and common platform for I-EMT coordination, organized training, and conducted RCDs with reference to the WHO’s EMT initiative. Furthermore, it also contributed to the development of the EMT Minimum Data Set (MDS), an international standard DHM tool that underwent testing at the RCDs before the WHO endorsement and its utilization in actual disaster response.

In the process of strengthening ASEAN regional capacity in DHM, the project is constantly capturing international trends and also making significant contributions in the development of global systems and tools.

This retrospective study included 75 persons with ischemic heart disease who were admitted to the Cardiac policlinic for a control check-up immediately after the suspension of air raids. Two-thirds of them were male (average age 62 ±10). Data were obtained using a specially conceived questionnaire based on recall.

Almost 40% of patients estimated that they were very anxious the week before the attacks began, but the anxiety decreased after the beginning of the air raids. Frequency of anginal pains increased after the start of the air raids, but the difference was not statisticaly significant. The intensity of pains drastically increased in the first week of war. Consequently, the average number of pain killers consumed increased from the week before the attacks to the first week of the attacks, and it reached the highest value the week after the suspension of the attacks (1.39, 1.87, and 3.02 pain pills per week, respectively). The average weekly number of medications was 3.50 in the week prior to the air raids, increased to 5.05 during the first week of air raids, and rose to 6.06 in the week after the suspension.

The adjustment on the psychological level was rapid but physical symptoms increased. This implies that physical adaptation to stress could be slower, or that the stress of the war provoked permanent changes in physical status.

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been increasingly used for medical surveillance purposes in mass-gathering events. No studies have investigated the reliability of live video transmission from UAVs for accurate identification of distressed race participants in need of medical attention. The aim of this study was to determine the proportion of time during which live medical surveillance UAV video feed was successfully transmitted and considered of sufficient quality to identify acute illness in runners participating in the 2022 Montreal Marathon (Canada).

Four UAVs equipped with high-resolution cameras were deployed at two pre-defined high-risk areas for medical incidents located within the last 500 meters of the race. The video footage was transmitted in real-time during four consecutive hours to a remote viewing station where four research assistants monitored it on large screens. Interruptions in live feed transmission and moments with inadequate field of view (FOV) on runners were documented.

On September 25, 2022, a total of 6,916 athletes ran during the Montreal Marathon and Half Marathon. Out of the eight hours of video footage analyzed (four hours per high-risk area), 91.7% represented uninterrupted live video feed with an adequate view of the runners passing through the high-risk areas. There was a total of 18 live feed interruptions leading to a total interruption time of 22 minutes and 19 seconds (median interruption time of 32 seconds) and eight distinct moments with inadequate FOV on runners which accounted for 17 minutes and 33 seconds (median of 1 minute 47 seconds per moments with inadequate FOV). Active surveillance of drone-captured footage allowed early identification of two race participants in need of medical attention. Appropriate resources were dispatched, and UAV repositioning allowed for real-time viewing of the medical response.

Live video transmission from UAVs for medical surveillance of runners passing through higher risk segments of a marathon for four consecutive hours is feasible. Live feed interruptions and moments with inadequate FOV could be minimized through practice and additional equipment redundancy.