User:Professor Taslim Uddin/sandbox

landslide Medical Management: Emergency and Rehabilitation Response

Introduction: Landslide has general impact and direct health effects including death and traumatic injuries on populations impacted by the 2017 landslides in the affected hilly and coastal districts in southeastern Bangladesh.landslide impact data was extracted from selected district and tertiary level hospitals. The medical response including emergency treatment and rehabilitation at a low resource Bangladesh  setting provided at pre-hospital and hospital care sites are important considerations.

Results and conclusions: Most fatalities in the 2017 Bangladesh landslides were due to suffocation and asphyxiation from burial. In Rangamati District, 6343 persons with minor injuries were treated in 22 emergency shelters. 154 injuries were treated at Rangamati General Hospital and 12 of the most severely injured persons were referred to regional tertiary Chittagong Medical College Hospital for specialized injury and rehabilitation management. Physical rehabilitation capacity and services in future landslides may be increased by providing rehabilitation technical skills training to responders and augmenting the emergency response with individual rehabilitation specialists and/or teams of rehabilitation professionals. 

Implications for rehabilitation Landslides may result in significant direct health effects including death and rehabilitation conditions such as severe traumatic physical injuries and less severe musculoskeletal conditions.

Pre-hospital and hospital emergency medical response systems may lack capacity to adequately manage the surge of rehabilitation conditions in landslides.

Physical rehabilitation treatment capacity in future landslides may be increased by providing rehabilitation technical skills training to responders and augmenting the emergency response structure with individual rehabilitation specialists and/or teams of rehabilitation professionals.

Rehabilitation, disability, emergency management, and other stakeholders are advised to employ such training and workforce strategies to reduce rehabilitation-related health effects in Bangladesh and other South-East Asian countries which are heavily impacted by landslides due to seasonal monsoons