Health in Emergencies and Disasters Quarterly
Volume:1 Issue: 2, Winter 2016

Environment and its ecosystems are affected by various natural and man-made disasters. The environmental management in disasters tries to protect ecosystems, sustain development, reduce disaster risk, and adapt to or decrease the impact of climate change. This study aimed to investigate the impact of disasters on the environment and methods of reducing these effects.
This review study was conducted by searching PubMed, Google Scholar, Elsevier, UNEP, SID, and Magiran databases using keywords of “environment”, “disasters”, “recovery”, and “lessons learned” from 1999 to 2015.
Decrease in surface and groundwater resources, pollution of water resources, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, air pollution and extinction of animal species are among post-disaster environmental damages. As a result of such changes in the environment and ecosystem, water shortage and drought, loss of vegetation, and food insecurity will ensue.
Due to these destructive incidents, the people’s ability to provide necessary resources for living decreases and their very lives are threatened. Consequently, they are forced to immigrate to save their lives.
Environmental recovery is one of the effective strategies for achieving sustainable development. In this regard, public and private organizations as well as international ones and people should work together. Responsible organizations, the stakeholders at different levels, and the public must be trained in this area and introduced to the latest international standards.
Rules and policies should be reviewed and revised in accordance with today’s needs and international standards.

Explosive events refer to events, either natural or man-made, that occur advertently or accidentally. This article aimed to study epidemiology of explosive events and investigate the health consequences of such events. It also aimed to discuss the prevention and management of these events from a healthcare provision viewpoint.
This descriptive study comprised 2 sections. First, following an extensive review of the literature, a database, containing the related articles was developed. Then, the core research group drafted the first adapted version of the results. Using a Delphi panel methodology, the results were finalized based on the consensus of 11 experts.
Terrorist explosion is the most common type and of ever-growing explosions worldwide. It accounts for the largest proportion of casualties caused by man-made events. Health consequences of explosions can be classified into physical, mental, and social ones, which can appear immediately or a long time after the event and affect individuals, families, and societies.
Because of the wide range and adverse impacts of explosions, healthcare authorities and staff should have a good grasp of preventive principles, as well as protection and management of explosion sites. Besides they have to be familiar with treating the injured. It is recommended that training courses and simulated explosive events be designed and run by the healthcare sector.

Currently, volunteer forces are among the main members of the healthcare services, particularly in the treatment sector, and play a key role in healthcare and treatment services. Since efficient human resources are the greatest and most important assets of all organizations, they constantly work to train, retain, and get the best of these valuable assets. The main objective of this work was to prioritize the motivational factors and satisfaction of the volunteer forces participating in treatment and health programs in the case of emergencies.
The study population of this research was all volunteers (N=600) in treatment and health programs of Kerman Province. Using the Morgan Table, 360 subjects were selected. The data-gathering instrument was Andam’s questionnaire of motivational factors with reliability of 0.94, and Galindo-Kuhn and Guzley (2001) questionnaire of satisfaction with reliability of 0.92. To determine research data distribution, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied. Moreover, for data analysis inferential statistics tests of Friedman, Mann–Whitney U, and Kruskal–Wallis were used at significance level of P The present research revealed that the most and least important motivational factors in volunteers of treatment and health units were purposeful motivation and financial motivation with average rankings of 5.45 and 1.99, respectively. In addition, among the satisfaction factors, the volunteers reported communication with volunteers and organizational communication as the most and least important satisfaction factors, respectively.
The results of this research indicated that the female volunteers participated in volunteer activities with greater occupational, support, progress, and social motivations. In addition, single participants had greater occupational, social, and financial motivations towards participation in these activities as compared to married participants.
The results of this research revealed that to absorb a higher number of volunteers in health and treatment organizations, commitment and purposeful aspects must be emphasized on, as by improving the motivational and satisfaction factors, we can expect that satisfaction and retention level increases in volunteers. Furthermore, by knowing the volunteers’ motivations, the managers of the health and treatment organizations can provide their retention and satisfaction and play a key role in crisis management during disasters by exploiting the volunteer services.

Because of vulnerability of the elders in disasters, preparedness of this group is very important in reducing the damages caused by the earthquake. Therefore, the present study designed and conducted with the purpose of developing interventions to increase earthquake preparedness and risk reduction in the elderly people living in Hadishahr Jolfa City, Iran.
This study was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest design and a control group. Fifty community dwelling elderly people were selected through simple random sampling method from 2 health centers and randomly allocated to intervention and control groups. Intervention program consisted of educational sessions with slideshows, group discussions, and sending reminder materials to their addresses a week later. The data were collected using the researcher developed preparedness questionnaire consisting of 58 items with 4 subscales (communication, environmental, during and after earthquake period). Inferential analyses of data, including analysis of covariance was done by SPSS version 16.
The findings showed that scores in all subscales of earthquake preparedness (communication, environment, during and after earthquake) significantly increased after educational intervention (P Preparedness programs for disaster risk reduction has a positive effect on the elders’ preparedness. Thus, similar multimodal preparedness programs should be used more frequently for this vulnerable community citizens.

Traffic accidents are among the important health issues that threaten human life. Children are among the main victims of these accidents. This research aimed to study the epidemiology of fatal and nonfatal road traffic accidents and their outcomes in children and adolescents in Shahroud, Iran.
This descriptive and analytical study was conducted from July to December 2011. Data were collected through a researcher-made questionnaire. After verifying its content validity and reliability, the questionnaire was completed by emergency medical technicians. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (the Chi-square test).
Of 363 studied cases, the majority of accidents happened in July with 108 (29.8%) cases and on Thursdays (18.7%). About 89.3% of drivers were male and aged 39 to 40 years (44.6%). Most accidents happened during 8 to 12 AM (23.7%). Moreover, 21.28% (1161 persons) of all injured people and 18.75% (48 persons) of all deceased victims were children under 14 years old. None of the victims under 14 years of age used protective tools. Head and spine trauma, respectively, were reported as the most common injury in this age group. There was no significant differences between victims aged less and more than 14 years old in terms of spinal cord injury (P=0.03).
Based on the results of this study, it is recommended to take some basic actions such as improving roads, identification of black spots, installation of warning signs at those points, and extending controls and supervisions by police. It is also very important to use standard protective tools for children and adolescents, force rules for using appropriate safety equipment for this age group, and provide public trainings for the people to raise their level of awareness.

Disasters have adverse impacts on different aspects of human life. Psychosocial Rehabilitation is one of the fields which is usually overshadowed and ignored by physical rehabilitation or its importance does not receive proper attention. This research attempts to study some lessons learned from Psychosocial Rehabilitation based on disaster experiences in Iran.
This study has a conventional qualitative content analysis design. The participants of study were 15 people with direct experience of earthquake and 12 experts in this field. The study sample was selected by purposeful sampling method and the data were collected by semi-structured interviews.
Lack of a suitable system to deliver Psychosocial Rehabilitation, challenge in establishing balance between short-term and long-term social and mental needs, lack of mental and social experts, inefficiency in using social capital and capacities are the most important lessons learned in this field.
Lack of awareness of mental and social problems of affected people after disaster is one of the most important barriers in successful and stable rehabilitation. Psychosocial Rehabilitation requires a suitable structure and planning for all stages of disaster management.

The man-made and natural disasters have adverse effects with sound, apparent, and unknown consequences. Among various components of disaster management in health sector, the most important role is performed by health-treatment systems, especially hospitals. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the surge capacity of hospitals of Kerman Province in disaster in 2015.
This is a quantitative study, conducted on private, military, and medical sciences hospitals of Kerman Province. The sampling method was total count and data collection for the research was done by questionnaire. The first section of the questionnaire included demographic information of the studied hospitals and second part examined the hospital capacity in response to disasters in 4 fields of equipment, physical space, human resources, and applied programs. The extracted data were analyzed by descriptive statistics.
The mean capability of implementing the surge capacity programs by hospitals of Kerman Province in disasters and in 4 fields of equipment, physical space, human resources, and applied programs was evaluated as 7.33% (weak). The surge capacity capability of state hospitals in disasters was computed as 8% and compared to private hospitals (6.07%) had a more suitable condition.
Based on the results of study and significance of preparedness of hospitals in response to disasters, it is proposed that managers of studied hospitals take measures to promote the hospital response capacity to disasters based on 4 components of increasing hospital capacity.