Abstract
Rathore FA, Gosney JE, Reinhardt JD, Haig AJ, Li J, DeLisa JA. Medical rehabilitation
after natural disasters: why, when, and how?
Natural disasters can cause significant numbers of severe, disabling injuries, resulting
in a public health emergency and requiring foreign assistance. However, since medical
rehabilitation services are often poorly developed in disaster-affected regions and
not highly prioritized by responding teams, physical and rehabilitation medicine (PRM)
has historically been underemphasized in global disaster planning and response. Recent
development of the specialties of “disaster medicine” and “disaster rehabilitation”
has raised awareness of the critical importance of rehabilitation intervention during
the immediate postdisaster emergency response. The World Health Organization Liaison
Sub-Committee on Rehabilitation Disaster Relief of the International Society of Physical
and Rehabilitation Medicine has authored this report to assess the role of emergency
rehabilitation intervention after natural disasters based on current scientific evidence
and subject matter expert accounts. Major disabling injury types are identified, and
spinal cord injury, limb amputation, and traumatic brain injury are used as case studies
to exemplify the challenges to effective management of disabling injuries after disasters.
Evidence on the effectiveness of disaster rehabilitation interventions is presented.
The authors then summarize the current state of disaster-related research, as well
as lessons learned from PRM emergency rehabilitation response in recent disasters.
Resulting recommendations for greater integration of PRM services into the immediate
emergency disaster response are provided. This report aims to stimulate development
of research and practice in the emerging discipline of disaster rehabilitation within
organizations that provide medical rehabilitation services during the postdisaster
emergency response.
Key Words
List of Abbreviations:
CRDR (Sub-Committee on Rehabilitation Disaster Relief), DART (Disability Acute Rehabilitation Team), ISPRM (International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine), NGO (nongovernmental organization), PRM (physical and rehabilitation medicine), PWD (person with disability), SCI (spinal cord injury), TBI (traumatic brain injury), WHO (World Health Organization)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 06, 2012
Footnotes
Presented to the World Congress of the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, June 12–16, 2011, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.
In-press corrected proof published online on Jul 14, 2012, at www.archives-pmr.org.
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
