China is an earthquake-prone country—the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake affected more people than either the 2004 Indonesian earthquake that triggered a tsunami, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The fourth paper in The Lancet themed issue on China analyses the country's medical response, looks at how it improved preparations, and makes suggestions for how the national disaster medical response system can be better prepared in the future.
While the Chinese Government responded quickly, activating the emergency medical rescue system within 2 h, and ordering 10 630 medical workers to the affected areas, the country was woefully unprepared.
Lulu Zhang from the Chinese Second Military Medical University and colleagues say "Earthquake emergency preparation was still inadequate when the 2008 earthquake struck. No disaster relief plans had been made, which resulted in the chaos of early self¬-rescue attempts."
As a result, "This earthquake fully exposed the region's poor risk¬ awareness, inadequate disaster prevention plan, inability to prewarn disaster-¬related government departments, and scarcity of escape, self ¬help, and first¬ aid training. These drawbacks indirectly contributed to the massive number of casualties, and hindered the disaster relief process."
China has made progress in forming multilateral coordination and local management systems, providing effective medical evacuation and treatment, enacting a timely public health response (paying attention to the care of survivors and post-disaster reconstruction to rebuild social self-confidence). However, the team say that more research is needed in areas including coordinating government actors as well as non-governmental volunteers; ensuring that medical rescuers get to the disaster zone quickly enough; transporting patients to hospitals quickly; and standardizing treatment procedures.
Professor Lulu Zhang, Institute of Military Health Management, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China. T) +86 021 81871421 E) zllrmit@yahoo.com.cn
The Lancet