17 January 2010

Global 911 ~ Better, Faster First Response?

In developed world urban settings with functioning firestations and ambulance services and with emergencies mostly limited in scale, we have high confidence in rapid first response to an alert. Fire trucks, police, and EMT's arriving in timespans measured in minutes is often the difference between life and death. In Port-au-Prince it has now been nearly a week and still the majority of the affected Haitians have not seen aid, those buried alive are no longer being heard from, and treatable critical injuries are largely unaddressed. Those doctors and nurses currently in situ are flat-out totally overwhelmed. The Globe's Maria Sacchetti writes of Saving lives with just the tools at hand: No water, no power as surgical mission starts in on the endless line of need and reports... 60 Minutes Byron Pitts reports from Haiti... Finally, CNN's Cooper and Watson report on "needless, stupid death"... Can we figure out a more effective Global 911 for better, faster first response to international emergencies? I'm impressed with this CNN story about Tad Skylar Agoglia's First Response Team of America and wonder if that's scalable and replicable?

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