disaster medicine

Sheri Fink, a physician and reporter, provides a landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, and a suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice. She reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. She unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, of a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing. In this book, she exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters, and how we can do better.

Although infectious disease outbreaks have long threatened the well-being of human societies, the realization that such epidemics and pandemics can be controlled or even prevented in the first place is recent. With advances in scientific understanding of disease and the development of technologies for the early detection of infectious agents, health agencies are better equipped for disease prevention and surveillance. This volume explores epidemic and pandemic threats and approaches to disease detection, prevention, and surveillance, relating them to concepts that lie at the foundation of STEM education. It also describes the steps readers can take to prepare for disease outbreaks.

Consists chiefly of papers from the First Congress of Internationl Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

An often harrowing account of the men and women who struggle to improve the lives of people in desperate need. The humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders (also known as M?decins Sans Fronti?res or MSF) delivers emergency aid to victims of armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters and those who lack reliable health care. Each year, more than 2,500 volunteer doctors, nurses, and other professionals join locally-hired staff to provide medical aid in more than eighty countries. This book follows these volunteers as they risk their health and lives to treat patients in need. It also covers the raucous founding of Doctors Without Borders in 1971 as the first non-governmental organization to both provide emergency medical assistance and publicly bear witness to the plight of the populations they served. In 1999, the organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.--From publisher description.

Presents the investigation of journalist Sheri Fink into allegations of doctors in New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center using drugs to speed the passing of triage patients in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when the hospital staff was overwhelmed with difficulties due to the storm.

Describes the history of emergency medical response teams as well as their training, special operations, extreme situations--such as natural or man-made disasters--and methods of saving lives.