Disasters and Disaster Medicine

The rate of disaster occurrence has increased greatly in the recent decades in both natural and man-made ones. There are more hurricanes and other natural disasters occurring now than a century ago. In addition, there is marked increase in the terrorist attacks on cities and civilians in both conventional weapons and in chemical and biological ones. The increase in the rate of disasters obliges medical society to pay more and more attention to the disaster response. There are attempts to make the subject of disaster as an independent specialty of medicine because it has unique focus in managing cases and it involves dealing with several issues other than direct medical treatment of patients.