Disaster Preparedness and Mass Casualty Incident Management Course

Major emergencies, crises and disasters have become more frequent during recent decades. This is true for countries like Maldives too, especially in the capital Male’ and in island resort (community) settings. They affect more and more people due to overcrowding and increasing economic activities. Effect on lives could be saved if the affected communities were better prepared, with an organized scalable response system already in place. In addition, survivors of mass casualty incidents often suffer disabilities or health impairment – physical or psychological. These can severely strain the health sector and draw scarce resources away from other essential programmes. Again, much of this is avoidable.

Experience shows that the local community is the first to provide emergency assistance in such incidents. For this reason, preparedness planning increasingly emphasizes building capacity (human, organizational and infrastructural) at the community level. Empowering communities to develop emergency management plans for mass casualty incidents require strong involvement by stakeholders at all levels.

Aim:

To ensure that participants of the course are able to prepare for a mass casualty incident and are able to effectively manage mass casualty incidents as part of a team.

Objective:

• Help participants to set guidelines and to assist in developing mass casualty management systems in island communities.
• Help management level personnel create systems to help prepare for a mass casualty incident.
• Ensure that participants are able to identify types of hazards most likely to give rise to mass casualty incidents in the community.
• Ensure that participants are able to manage a mass casualty incident with the help of community managers.
• Ensure that participants are able to understand disaster management terminologies.

Target audience

The primary target audience for this course is those responsible for developing, implementing and taking part in mass casualty incident management plans and policies in island communities.

Assessment

Participants will be assessed through online quizzes at the end of each topic. Quizzes can be done multiple times. Average scores of 80% or above from the quizzes are required to pass the course. All lessons and quizzes should be completed to be considered for the certificate.

Attendance

The course will be delivered online through ThinkSAFE Maldives website. Participants will be able to do the course on their own time at their own pace. The typical time limit for the course could be from 5 days to 4 weeks depending on the requirement of the participant’s employer.