Editorial: Military-Civilian Collaboration in Disaster Medicine

This is an editorial comment for Volume 1, Number 1. Medical disasters are “events in which the number of acutely ill or injured persons exceeds the capacity of the local emergency medical services (EMS) system to provide basic and advanced medical care according to prevalent regional standards.” There are multi-casualty incidents, such as transportation accidents, in which the local EMS system is overwhelmed; mass disasters, such as major earthquakes and wars, in which the local EMS system is severely damaged; and endemic disasters, such as combinations of famine, epidemics and revolutions which often occur in world regions without EMS systems. Nuclear war has become recognized as the “ultimate disaster” which is beyond disaster medicine systems' capacities to save lives. Military medicine, however, which is organized for “conventional” war, offers the maximal life-saving potential for mass disasters in peace time.