Scenario based disaster health education: "war stories" as vicarious experience

Abstract

The frequency of disasters and the damage caused by them has increased significantly in recent history 2009 (CRED). In the 50 year period to the year 2000 disasters caused the loss of more than 12 million lives, affected more than 5 billion people and cost more than $4 trillion USD (CRED, 2009; IFRC, 2008). Due to the nature of disasters and the demands of international deployment in particular many of those involved are having their first disaster experience. In one study it was found that only 18 out of 53 (34%) Non Government Organisations (NGO) surveyed required that personnel had previous international experience (Moresky, Eliades, Bhimani, Bunney and Van Rooyen, 2001). The lessons of experience can also rarely be learned, as the majority volunteer for short periods then return to their normal occupations without passing on their experiences (Birnbaum, 2005).