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Humanity First held its first disaster response course on March 13th to 15th,2009. This was organised in conjunction with the Leicester division of the UKInternational Search and Rescue (ISAR) Team who shared their vastknowledge and field experience as part of Humanity First teaching Faculty.

This course aims to give the delegates the closest possible experience ofproviding medical care in a disaster environment. Importantly, the HumanityFirst course does not duplicate the specialist acute life support courses like

ALS, ATLS, APLS and PALS in the UK. We aim to build on basic core

resuscitation knowledge applying this in a disaster hit area. Resuscitation in acontrolled environment like the NHS Accident and Emergency Department isdifferent to providing life support by the roadside, medical camp or next to adestroyed building and this has been reflected in this unique course.

The 3 day course was attended by 12 attendees with a 2:1 ratio of attendeeto faculty. The sessions were divided into lecture and exercise components.Lectures were mostly held in mornings with hands on experience engaging inmock scenarios in the afternoons. Lecturers included experienced specialistsin surgery, medicine, pre-hospital care, paediatrics, public health and logistics.

Aspects like disaster classification and response coordination, safety andsecurity, briefing the media and inter-agency communication with emergencyresponse colleagues were included in both the taught and exercisecomponents.

The delegates experienced working in teams, managed transport of theirteams to disaster zones, set up tents, and managed medical camps learningabout general management and specific treatment applying principles ofimprovisation and prioritising therapies. Some examples of these mockscenarios included extracting casualties safely from collapsed buildings,managing single and mass casualties brought in by helicopter and treatmentof medical conditions seen in a tsunami, earthquake and other disasterscenarios. A number of actors participated in the course to assist runningthese scenarios playing the part of injured patients requiring critical, urgentand less urgent medical care. This proved to be an exciting and informativeweekend for the delegates and trainers alike.

The trainers have worked hard to develop the Humanity First Training Manualand were delighted to announce the launch of the first edition with theCourse. We aim to run this course regularly training personnel and teams inthe UK and internationally. It is planned to take the course to high-risk areas

like Indonesia and Bangladesh where disasters are frequent and we are

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planning to work with local emergency disaster response teams to improvethe overall relief effort.

In addition to providing training, the course is used as an assessment tool ofthe suitability of attendees to be included as a member of a Humanity First

Disaster Response Team and candidates are tested on various aspectsthroughout the intensive three day course.