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| Home > Healthy People > January 2004 |
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Winter 2004
Local disaster assistance team joins MO-1 DMAT
St. John's teamed with CoxHealth and the Greene County Office on Emergency
Management to form a disaster medical assistance team in the fall of 2002.
Since then, the team has joined Missouri-1 Disaster Medical Assistance
Team, a St. Louis-based DMAT, as the southwest Missouri chapter. The
purpose of a DMAT, which is sponsored by the federal, state and local
government and public and private organizations, is to provide volunteer
medical aid during any man-made or natural disaster where local medical
resources might be overwhelmed for a significant amount of time.
“MO-1 has been in existence for five years and has been deployed several
times,” says St. John's Emergency Medical Services medical director
Janet
Jordan, M.D., who leads the local chapter with St. John’s EMS Director Bob
Patterson. “MO-1 is bringing our local DMAT in as the southwest Missouri
regional chapter, which includes Springfield, Branson and Bolivar.”
She added the local DMAT now has about 300 members.
MO-1 recently received a $1.2 million grant to develop a state-level
disaster team following the federal model developed by the Department of
Homeland Security. The grant will be used to purchase disaster supplies
and equipment totaling $450,000 and pharmaceuticals totaling $150,000, all
of which will stay in southwest Missouri.
ORGANIZED RESPONSE
“The medical community is thirsty for an organized response to a disaster,
be it biochemical or trauma," Jordan says. "So many nurses and paramedics
approached us about local disaster preparedness, that organizing the DMAT
was the only right thing to do."
DMATs from across the country have been preparing and responding for many
years to national disasters and responded in force on and shortly after
September 11, 2001.
Team training concentrates on the skills unique to disaster situations.
Team members must learn to operate and function independently for 72 hours
without any outside support. Conditions while on deployment can be
particularly hazardous and uncomfortable. Typically the team members will
find themselves in field hospitals consisting of tents or abandoned
buildings.
“It’s important that we have volunteers from across our region,” Jordan
says. “If our DMAT is deployed, we don’t want to take the all the medical
personnel from one hospital. We want to utilize our volunteers from the
entire region so we won’t deplete our local resources.”
Jordan and Patterson say the plan is to continue to develop the southwest
Missouri DMAT in 2004 and develop DMATs in Kansas City and possibly
Columbia in the future.
“We encourage folks who are interested in joining our team to contact the
St. John’s EMS office at 417-820-5454. We keep DMAT applications for
anyone who is interested in volunteering. DMAT members don’t have to be
medical personnel,” Patterson says.
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