ABSTRACT

This chapter summarises the recommendations and guidelines of greatest use in a disaster situation, in order to plan and execute a practicable pre-hospital care system. Consequently, pre-hospital care has different features according to the actual phase of a disaster response plan. A matrix layout is more useful in order to identify what kind of medical responses should be given in a disaster pre-hospital setting. Pre-hospital care begins with the rescuers ability to recognise these environmental risks, which are very often much in evidence during the early phases of a disaster response. Several factors do influence the kind of pre-hospital care in case of a disaster situation. In order to be realistic, and consequently to be the most effective as possible, several ‘strategic’ evaluations have to be considered, either in the planning phase, when different scenarios can be analysed more accurately, or in the response phase, when the best available solution has to be chosen within a few minutes.