 A disaster is a destructive event that causes a discrepancy between the number of

casualties and their treatment capacity.

 In health and medical care, disaster meansa situation in which the need of medical care
exceeds the immediately available resources and in which extraordinary and coordinated
measures are necessary if normal quality standards are to be maintained

 we need to:

 attend to and treat injured persons within a injury area

 transport the injured and give treatment during transport

 attend to and treat injured persons in hospital

 take preventive measures against psychological sequelae in the injured, relatives

and staff involved in rescue work.

 Epidemiology is the study of the causes and distribution of disease in human populations

Disaster epidemiology – the use of epidemiology in disaster situations.

Epidemiologic methods can be used to measure and describe the adverse health effects of
natural and human-caused disasters.

 PREIMPACT

 disaster prevention and education

 IMPACT

 information collection and disaster mitigation

 POSTIMPACT

 rehabillitation

 To identify the priority health problems in the affected community.

 To determine the extent of disease existing within a community.

 To identify the causes of disease and the risk factors.

 To determine the priority health interventions.

 To determine the extent of damage and the capacity of the local infrastructure.
 To monitor health trends of the community.

 To evaluate the impact of health programs.

 Poor understanding of basic epidemiological principles and measurement techniques.

 Rapid turnover of skilled staff.

 Lack of access to a significant fraction of the affected population due to chaos or

insecurity.

 Limited resources for processing information.

 Difficulty in estimating the population size.

 Survey samples may not represent the total affected population.

 To determine the magnitude of the emergency.

 To define the specific health needs of the affected population.

 To establish priorities and objectives for action.

 To identify existing and potential public health problems.

 To evaluate the capacity of the local response including resources and logistics.

 To determine external resource needs for priority actions.

 To set up the basis for a health information system.

 To identify the possible root causes of problems.

 To investigate further to verify the actual causes of a problem.

 To define needs that have not been met.

 To develop an action plan for dealing with problems.

 To improve the quality of programs.