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19th World Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine in South Africa
19th World Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine in South Africa
19th World Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WCDEM) was held in Cape Town, South Africa on 21-24 April 2015. WCDEM is a bi-annual congress providing opportunities to share disaster and emergency medicine experiences and network with colleagues from healthcare and non-governmental sectors.
The theme of the conference this year was “Creating Capacity, Building Resilience”, emphasizing the impact of humanitarian disaster to health systems, prehospital and crisis response. During the 3.5-days conference, six plenary sessions and more than 20 related topics were discussed, including disaster risk management, resilience building, disaster training and foreign medical teams.
Representatives from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Disaster Preparedness and Response Institute (HKJCDPRI) participated in the conference and joined pre and post-conference workshops titled “The WHO Collaborating Centres on Mass Gatherings Workshops” and “Frameworks for Conducting Disaster Health Research” respectively.
On the last day of the conference, HKJCDPRI representative delivered a presentation on “Building a Model for Comprehensive Disaster Preparedness and Response Training in Hong Kong” which introduced HKJCDPRI to the international audience and highlighted the pressing need of structural evidence-based disaster preparedness trainings in Hong Kong, and the approach HKJCDPRI adopted to address such needs. The presentation was received with positive feedback from the audience.