Climate change is real and is sure to bring about more extreme weather events along with the accompanying disasters*. Emergency and relief workers have been preparing. Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres took a cue from the Italian Army’s inflatable tents used during the 2004 tsunami disaster response in Southeast Asia.
The doctors took the idea a step further, contacted the manufacturer and developed a state-of-the-art inflatable hospital with full surgical facilities that can be up and running in 48 hours. The first inflatable hospital went into action 10 months later with 120 beds, 4 operating theaters, an emergency room and intensive care unit in response to the earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir. Thousands were injured and the district’s only hospital was destroyed. The new inflatable allowed the doctors to treat 700 of the critically injured. The hospitals and health care workers have gone on to save lives in natural disasters and armed conflicts around the globe in nearly 70 countries including the Philippines, Haiti, South Sudan and Syria.
“National boundaries and political circumstances or sympathies must have no influence on who is to receive humanitarian help.” - Nobel Peace Prize Release, Oslo, Norway, Oct. 15, 1999
*The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has determined more than half of those events in 2013 were due to human activities role in global warming.
www.doctorswithoutborders.org