Upcoming
Upcoming Events
The events planned during 2000 and 2001 include a third training cycle and a medical response drill in which the full complement of players in a large-scale lost-source exercise participate along with the medical responders.
“Echo” Trainer Courses
Two trainer courses will be held in 2001. The objective is to complete the training program cycle of this regional model project and provide a forum for presentation of national emergency response plans and discussion of how medical teams can be integrated into those plans. The courses will take place under the authority of the Ministry of Health of Belarus at the Research Clinical Institute of Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology, Minsk, Belarus, Oct. 8-12, 2001 and the Josef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Oct. 15-19, 2001. The trained faculty cadre will teach these courses and train new faculty from member states that have not yet received the curriculum. The course participants will come from Albania, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Khazakstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Turkey, Uzbekistan.
“Harmony II” Medical Response Exercise
The “Harmony II” medical response exercise is designed as a radiation accident simulation of a lost-source scenario. Its major impact will be a total exercise that incorporates the medical component into the overall national/regional emergency response.
Radiological accidents raise transborder issues. Collaboration and interactions between countries are slowed by miscommunication, lack of preparedness, and lack of ability to respond. Another impediment to regional response is the lack of training exercises in which medical responders are drilled at the same time and in the same exercise as other players. The Harmony II regional medical response drill is designed to address that disconnected situation by bringing together the medical responders who have been trained in this program with IAEA, World Health Organization, World Meteorological Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, and other European bodies.
Date of Exercise: September 2003(projected), taking place over four days. The first 48 hours will involve the acute medical phase and the subsequent 48 hours the longer-term public health phase.
Participants: IAEA, WHO, WMO, FAO, European Community, UNDP, UNESCO plus those countries that were involved in the predecessor Harmony I exercise and in which Regional EMS Training Centers are located:
- Armenia (Yerevan Regional EMS Training Center);
- Estonia (Estonian Disaster Medicine Center, Tallinn);
- Moldova (Chisinau Regional EMS Training Center);
- Russian Federation (Moscow Regional EMS Training Center);
- Ukraine (Ukrainian Scientific Emergency and Disaster Medicine Center, Kiev)
“Medical Injects” of the Exercise: An as-yet-undefined number of persons grouped into 4-5 scenarios.
- Limited number of irradiated, contaminated and/or injured people;
- Persons in the immediate vicinity of the accident with external and internal contamination and those without;
- Persons who may require notification and activation of public health protective actions and who may or may not require medical evaluation;
- Evacuated/sheltered persons who require no medical evaluation but may be candidates for long-term follow-up.
Objectives
Exercise Objectives:
- To demonstrate a combined medical and overall emergency response event
- To test the medical response to the drill
- To provide guidance on how to prepare, conduct and evaluate an exercise.
Objectives for emergency medical personnel:
- Recognition of exposure to radiation and initiation of the appropriate cascade of events;
- Medical assessment, triage and resuscitation of symptomatic and non-symptomatic patients within the exposure zone;
- Appropriate interaction/consultation with emergency safety and technical personnel;
- Appropriate consideration of public health issues (notification, sheltering/evacuation, food and water contamination, epidemiological follow-up) by the medical team in coordination with other experts on-scene;
- Evaluation and performance of systems response;
- Final debriefing at which exercise is formally concluded and conclusions and recommendations formulated.
