The hospital disaster plan states3: Police responsible for notification. | (a) Once notification confirmed, a stand by team of emergency doctors and nurses go to incident site. | The stadium security department has the responsibility of liaising with the police and ambulance services. The city of Harare Ambulance Service would normally be present at all mass gatherings in the city. The stadium is considered state property and therefore not under the city’s jurisdiction. On this occasion they were not invited as would normally be the case. | • No arrangements had been made to have the ambulance services present at the stadium. |
• There was no notification by the police. |
The city of Harare ambulance service provides prehospital care through a doctor led team and paramedic teams. The central hospitals do not have a stand by emergency team to send to any disaster. | • Spectators at the stadium called the ambulance stations using mobile phones. |
Casualty senior staff verify and inform switchboard: triggering a cascading process of notification. | (b) The ambulance team and the medical incident officer (MIO) to coordinate and communicate with receiving hospital about patients. | | • The casualty department first became aware of the event when the injured arrived and reported “many injured at the stadium”(personal communication). |