MEDICAL MEASURES

Evening Star, Issue 21714, 8 May 1934, Page 10

MEDICAL MEASURES

.IN EVENT OF EARTHQUAKE Referring to the medical and allied measures which should be taken, in the case of a severe earthquake, the ‘ New Zealand Medical Journal ’ in an editorial article says:— “ In only one centre has the problem been attacked from a practical point of view, and though it is by no means ideal, yet the medical organisation has been discussed in great detail, and its special value is that, it is automatic, and comes into operation at once, and is administered by a combined committee of representatives from the Defence Department, Health Department, and Hospital Board.;. .. We have' mentioned one large centre which has a practical and detailed medical scheme, or rather two schemes, namely : (1) The dispatch of an organised and equipped medical unit to any area in the province should need arise, such unit to act as a nucleus •, (2) the measures to be adopted in the event of an earthquake in a city. This larger scheme is also based on the military system for the collection, treatment, and evacuation of the injured, and the setting up of advanced dressing stations and casualty clearing stations.

“It is automatic, as it is essential that organised measures for the relief of the injured must be set up at once. It is flexible and it is simple, and it co-ordinates the whole of the medical resources of that particular community. As in Napier, all the medical men will bear the brunt of the first twenty-four hours, but they will know where to go, and they will be assisted by the combined personnel of the various voluntary aid societies, each of which will know its allotted duties.

~. . What one centre is attempting to do, should bo the aim of every centre, large and small. It is to the medical practitioner, that the community always looks when epidemics or calamities attack it, and he should see that in his district adequate medicdl precautions have been drawn up.”