Disaster and Mass Casualty Triage

The World Health Organization defines an event as a disaster when “normal conditions of existence are disrupted and the level of suffering exceeds the capacity of the hazard-affected community to respond to it.” In any given year, more than 100,000 people are killed in natural disasters around the globe, and millions more are injured or disabled1. The catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 and the destructive tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 are recent examples that show the difficulties in providing medical care in the wake of such devastation.