Database of Health Workforce Innovations

693

Title

Medical and Public Health Coordination following the 2016 Earthquake in Japan

Brief Description of Challenge

Brief Description of Innovation

The DMAT is one of the disaster medical relief teams which responds from the onset of a disaster for a couple of days until other disaster medical relief teams arrive. The DMAT consists of mostly five to six members that include a doctor, a nurse, and a logistician.

A total of 466 DMAT teams and 2,071 DMAT team members were deployed to
the Kumamoto area, and 1,894 disaster medical relief teams and 8,471 disaster medical relief team member deployments followed. The DMAT established a medical coordination command post at several key disaster hospitals to designate medical coverage areas. The DMAT evacuated over 1,400 patients from damaged hospitals, transported medical supplies to affected hospitals, and coordinated 14 doctor helicopters used for severe patient transport. To keep constant medical and public health operations, DMAT provided medical coordination management until the local medical coordination was on-track.

Innovation – Increase Numbers

Solidarity staffing (eg deployments to/from other jurisdictions)
Cross-sector staff deployments
Other

Innovation – Increase Flexibility

Innovation – Increase Availability

Worker

Nurse Specialists*
Nurses - Licensed Practical
Nurses - Registered
Physicians - Emergency
Physicians - Intensive Care
Physicians - Primary/Family
Physicians - Specialists
Other Health Care Workers

Task/Skill

Training / Retraining

Brief Description of Setting

The 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake (Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan) occurred with two sets of major earthquakes. The first major earthquake occurred on April 14th with a 6.5 magnitude and the second occurred on April 16th with a 7.3 magnitude. Both earthquakes occurred in the center of Kyusyu Island, and the depth of origin was about 10km deep. There was no tsunami from this earthquake, but shaking near the epicenter was huge and resulted in the collapse or damage of houses and buildings. As a result, 82 people lost their lives, 619 people were severely injured, 1,433 had minor injuries, 1,216 houses were completely collapsed, over 700 evacuation shelters were established, and over 11,000 people were evacuated from their homes at one time.

Setting - Organization

Critical Care
Emergency Medical Services
Hospitals
Public Health

Setting - Geography

Facilitators

Learning from a prior earthquake led to the establishment of formal DMAT teams in Japan

Barriers

Impact / Evaluation

Kondo, H., Koido, Y., Kawashima, Y., Kohayagawa, Y., Misaki, M., Takahashi, A., Kondo, Y., Chishima, K., & Toyokuni, Y. (2019). Consideration of Medical and Public Health Coordination - Experience from the 2016 Kumamoto, Japan Earthquake. Prehospital and

Link

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049023X19000177

Contact

Hisayoshi Kondo, MD, PhD

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Organization

Disaster Medical Center of Japan

Phone Number

Country

Japan

Expert Assessment – Impact

Assessed Risk - Workers

Assessed Risk - System

Assessed Risk – Patients

Expert Assessment – Confidence

Language

English

Type

Published Literature

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