EMT Recertification of International Emergency Medical Teams by the World Health Organization
The Japan Disaster Relief Team (JDR Medical Team) was re-certified as an Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Type 2 by the World Health Organization (WHO) on November 17.
When a large-scale natural disaster occurs overseas and causes extensive damage, various emergency medical teams are dispatched to the affected countries and regions from all over the world, but their capabilities and standards vary. In 2011, WHO started to establish international standards for EMT, and the EMT Classification and Global Registry system was launched in July 2015. This system enables governments and international organizations that respond to large-scale disasters to know the capabilities of each EMT in advance, and to assign roles and areas of activity appropriate to the capabilities of each EMT, thereby providing more effective emergency medical assistance.
The JDR medical team was certified in 2016 as a Type 1 (providing initial and traveling care to outpatients) and Type 2 (surgical and inpatient functions) and Specialist Cell (dialysis and surgery) competence team. In order to continue this certification, the team must undergo recertification every five years. The formal recertification process was postponed in 2021, the fifth year since the JDR medical team was first certified, due to the new coronavirus, and will take place this year. Normally, the evaluators visit each team to inspect the team’s actual condition, hear from the team about their recent dispatch experience and the progress of their activities, and then make a decision on whether or not the team can be reaccredited. This time, however, the WHO had visited the site of the JDR medical team that was dispatched to the Turkey earthquake that occurred in February of this year, and had completed its team inspection, which is also required for re-certification. Therefore, the remaining process, an explanation of the dispatch experience and activity progress since 2016, was conducted online on November 17. Through these processes, the JDR medical team was successfully re-certified on November 17. Evaluators were impressed by “the high reputation of the site visit in Turkey with patients and the fact that the coordination center functioned like an office.” The comments included.
The JDR Medical Team will continue to improve its team structure and provide training and drills to its members so that it can provide higher quality and more necessary medical care when deployed to large-scale disasters overseas.
… and upwards
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