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Letter
Van earthquake: development of emergency medicine in a country
  1. Nurettin Özgür Doğan1,
  2. Gökhan Aksel2
  1. 1Department of Emergency Medicine, Etlik İhtisas Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey
  2. 2Department of Emergency Medicine, Mardin State Hospital, Mardin, Turkey
  1. Correspondence to Dr Nurettin Özgür Doğan, Attending Physician, Department of Emergency Medicine, Etlik İhtisas Training and Research Hospital, Etlik/Ankara/Turkey; nurettinozgurdogan{at}gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2012-201460

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    Turkey experienced a destructive earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 near the city of Van on 23 October 2011. The earthquake caused significant mortality and morbidity with a large number of homeless and jobless people. According to official records, 644 people died and 252 people survived from the wreckage.1 However, the destructive effect of the earthquake was greater than expected for two reasons: (1) Seasonal and local characteristics of Van complicated appropriate transport of relief to the region. (2) Public buildings, including hospitals and other health centres, were destroyed or seriously damaged.

    In Turkey, emergency medicine was declared as a new specialty in 1993. Since that year, the emergency viewpoint has been raised in many emergency departments and prehospital settings. Turkey is one of the countries in which natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods commonly occur. For example, …

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    Footnotes

    • Competing interests The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.