Macau prepares medical team for crisis response

Susan Briggs, director of International Trauma and Disaster Institute at the Harvard Medical School

A group of 175 doctors and health professionals from Macau will attend the first programme on advanced disaster response in order to form a medical crisis team.
A medical team from the International Trauma and Disaster Institute at the Harvard Medical School will conduct the programme next weekend.
The group of trainers has experience in disaster environment, such as the attacks on the twin towers in New York in 2001, the tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004 and the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.
“It is impossible to predict a disaster,” institute director Susan Briggs said, quoted by Portuguese news agency Lusa.
“I never thought that one day we’d have to evacuate an entire city in Louisiana [because of the Hurricane Katrina in 2005]. We need to be prepared for everything, even in Macau,” she said.
Briggs explained that “the concept of crisis response is identical” in any type of disaster – earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, chemical or nuclear accident.
The programme will be supported by the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), which will hold drills.
MUST Faculty of Health Sciences executive Billy Chan added that Macau is more likely to be hit by industrial accidents or road accidents than other disasters, given the proximity to chemical factories in the mainland and the development of road infrastructures, which includes four bridges and an international airport.
The programme was a result of the 5th Sino-Luso Medical Forum held last week that focused on ‘Advanced Disaster Medical Response’ and brought eight keynote speakers from the US and Hong Kong.
They shared their experiences in handling the Haiti earthquake and other major natural disasters.