Article report on waste caused by lack of medical response planning to a disaster.

(Title:) Emergency Medical Assistance Team Response Following Taiwan Chi-Chi Earthquake.

(Authors:) Edbert B. Hsu, Matthew Ma, Fang Yue Lin, Michael J. VanRooyen and Frederick M. Burkle Jr.

(Source:) Prehospital and Disaster Medicine / Volume 17 / Issue 01 / March 2002, pg. 17-22. 

            This article focuses on the reaction of emergency medical assistance teams (EMATs) during the Chi-Chi, Taiwan earthquake that happened in 1999. The earthquake was measured as a 7.3 on the Richter scale and caused damages that cost $92 billion USD to repair. The repairs were an unavoidable cost, but there were also avoidable costs that happened after the earthquake. 

            The earthquake caused injuries that needed medical attention all over Chi-Chi. Not all available EMATs were sent out to deal with these injuries, even though they were needed. This is a form of Waiting Waste, all resources weren’t capitalized to help deal with the disaster. This waiting caused the most tragic form of waste, Human death and suffering. This avoidable waste could have been evaded if there was a preexisting disaster procedure for EMATs teams to follow after the earthquake.

            After the earthquake most of the communication systems and equipment were taken off-line. This slowed coordination, request for help and information flow. The lack of information and procedure cause the EMATs that did go into the disaster area to be ill prepared. Most of EMATs teams reported to have too much of certain supplies and not enough of others supply that could have been used to help people; this is a strange mix of Transport Waste (delivering unrequired resources) and Ill Equipped Waste (Not having right equipment). The Ill Equipped Waste inhibited EMATs from stopping Human suffering and saving lives, which is the most costly of the avoidable waste that happened during the earthquake’s aftermath.

            The disaster has taken its toll. Taiwan’s government has implemented procedures and forms of communication to help EMATs stop avoidable Human suffering during future disasters.