An Official Journal of the Japan Primary Care Association

In early April of 2011 after the Great East Japan Earthquake, a medical evacuation shelter, termed “Short Stay Base,” was enacted in the Ishinomaki region of Miyagi Prefecture. In late May, the operation of the shelter was taken over by the Primary Care for All Team (PCAT) sponsored by the Japan Primary Care Association. With a multi-disciplinary team of professionals, the function of the shelter was to provide a comprehensive care for evacuees who are medically or socially complicated for a typical evacuation site residence, but not medically complicated enough to occupy a hospital bed, which was a precious resource during that time. By extending collaborations to the local public health/social services/nursing services agencies, rebuilding of the community medical infrastructure was attempted by the shelter medical staff. During the 105 days of the shelter operation, there were 32 occupants, with mean age of 59.6, mean length of stay of 12 days. The reasons for admission comprised of 75% for medical necessity, 15.6% for need of infectious isolation, and 9.4% for social admission. The role of this shelter demonstrated the changing needs of the disaster recovery stages. In planning for future disaster relief efforts, designing the infrastructure to support various medical and non-medical needs of the evacuees in progressive stages of the disaster recovery is greatly needed.

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The tsunami and fire damage from the Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011, caused damage over a large area and destroyed the local healthcare system. Therefore, the disaster-hit areas required various types of medical support. Many doctors from the Department of General Medicine, Juntendo University School of Medicine contributed in this effort.
Some doctors who happened to be travelling on the Shinkansen on the day the disaster struck provided health care to other passengers and helped them until they reached home. Doctors also went to the coastal areas where the extent of damage was unclear, in order to assess the medical requirements there. The other important aspects were providing medical examinations in evacuation shelters and controlling the spread of infection among the evacuees. To supplement the local health system, which had been devastated, the doctors also set up and participated in a medical consultation system that utilized information technology. Furthermore, to prevent disaster-related deaths after the emergency period, pneumococcal vaccines were provided free of charge.
The skills required to tackle the situation were very diverse and included those pertaining to areas such as acute disease care, chronic malady management, infection management, and disease prevention. However, all these aspects are handled by doctors as part of their daily duties and they are skilled in handling them. On the basis of the experience gained during this period, we will reexamine the physician's roles in General Medicine and prepare for future disasters.

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Introduction : Psychological First Aid (PFA) has been globally recommended as a program to reduce mental-health burdens associated with disasters and disaster relief work. The Japan Primary Care Association has designated PFA as a prerequisite for enlisted aid workers. This paper aims to describe general information on PFA and report implementation and evaluation of PFA training sessions held by the PCAT.
Methods : Descriptive analysis of event records and evaluations from the participants.
Results : PFA training session was held 24 times between November 2011 and June 2013. In total, 286 people with various backgrounds participated, and 60% of the paricipants. was health professionals. Majority of participants positively also evaluated such as skills and knowledge obtained can be applied to not only disaster-relief work but also daily practice or work.
Conclusion : The critical elements of PFA are well situated in disaster relief work in Japan. Further analysis is warranted to ensure the effectiveness of the program and quality assurance of trainers.

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