Summary

The Handbook for Pandemic and Mass-Casualty Planning and Response offers the disaster medicine professional community the information and tools to better prepare, individually and collaboratively, to mitigate mortality and morbidity when catastrophe occurs. It captures the lectures and teachings of an extraordinary 12 day NATO Advanced Study Institute held in Croatia in late 2011: 'Applying lessons learned and sharing best practices in addressing pandemics and catastrophic health events.' The results of this event, held under the auspices of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme, are presented in three sections: The Context of Catastrophic Health Planning; Principles of Response to Catastrophes with Mass Casualties; and Communication and Information Sharing. The handbook presents rigorous, standardized cross-disciplinary training, such as Medical Response to Major Incidents; the need to guide medical and humanitarian efforts by ethical principles; the importance of risk communication and trustworthy information; treatment guidelines along with medical and surgical practices for amputation, burns, and blast injuries; triage guidelines and treatment algorithms; principles of mass-casualty planning; and the need to identify and correctly position -in advance- the networks and collaborative structures that must work together and share capabilities. Drawing on experts from Croatia, Slovenia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the Russian Federation, Italy, Spain, Mexico and the United States - and especially on Croatia's experience handling mass casualties during its Homeland War in the 1990s - this handbook combines research and real-world examples to assist the disaster response community in preparing for mass-casualty incidents.