By Dr. Thomas G. Hedberg | Executive Director - IMCRA
Dear Friends,
Your generous support over the past year has helped us immensely with compiling a detailed handbook, a set of videos and several addtional materials encompassing "What-To-Do-If" instructions applicable to future earthquake disasters in Japan and elsewhere. While much of this material is suitable for onsite physicians and nurses, there are also several components of this program's output which speak directly to the victims both in the immediate aftermath of the event as well as in the months and years that follow. Publicity has been excellent and the personal data collection colloquium which we held in Japan last year was excellent and we were pleased that NHK World TV news featured a nearly two minute segment on the event. IMCRA will be making this material available globally soon.
Upon assembling this material, one thing became very clear. There are seldom if ever trained medical professionals directly on hand at the exact time when a medical crisis is occurring. Further, in many regions even emergency response will be delayed or impossible due to infrastructure damage. Even in the absence of such damage, simple terrain and logistical issues (e.g. traffic jams) can prevent help from arriving when it is most needed.
Surprisingly, there is a way to partially remediate this problem by a device that has become nearly ubiquitous worldwide, the smartphone. A new program IMCRA is launching this month is called: "Prompt Intervention Volunteer 1st Aid Tutorials" (PIVAT) and is being organized across several countries for full deployment in early 2018. The PIVAT program provides short easy-to-follow and easy-to-acces native-language tutorials on correct First Aid procedures to be used by lay bystanders in cases of arterial bleeding, drowning, electric shock, stroke and other life threatening emergencies that can either accompany a major natual disaster or occur spontaneously.
Since there is currently so much evidence of bystanders simply taking smartphone videos of injured people or trying to administer often useless folk remedies (e.g. running with a drowned child) or dangerously incorrect First Aid (e.g.pounding on a victim's chest without administering artificial respiration) our medical faculty concluded that anyone with an interest and desire to help in a way that would at least do no further harm, should be able to do so effectively. The program has just become available for support on the GlobalGiving website and can be found at: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/pivat-prompt-intervention-volunteer-aid-tutorials/.
Given the initiation of the new project, we will be transferring most of this program's resources to PIVAT and sincerely hope you will continue your interest and support for what we are doing in that endeavour!
Thank you!
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By Tom Hedberg | Project Leader
By Dr. Thomas G. Hedberg | Executive Director
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