How emergency physicians can use their everyday skills to manage a "Near Disaster" medical conference.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Ulkumen Rodoplu.
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The lack of a universally applicable definition of terrorism has confounded the understanding of terrorism since the term was first coined in 18th Century France. Although a myriad of definitions of terrorism have been advanced over the years, virtually all of these definitions have been crisis-centered, frequently reflecting the political perspectives of those who seek to define it. In this article, we deconstruct these previously used definitions of terrorism in order to reconstruct a definition of terrorism that is consequence-centered, medically relevant, and universally harmonized. A universal medical and public health definition of terrorism will facilitate clinical and scientific research, education, and communication about terrorism-related events or disasters. We propose the following universal medical and public definition of terrorism: The intentional use of violence--real or threatened--against one or more non-combatants and/or those services essential for or protective of their health, resulting in adverse health effects in those immediately affected and their community, ranging from a loss of well-being or security to injury, illness, or death.
Over the past two decades, terrorism has exacted an enormous toll on the Republic of Turkey, a secular democracy with a 99.8% Muslim population. From 1984 to 2000, an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Turkish citizens were killed by a nearly continuous stream of terrorism-related events. During this period, the Partiya Karekerren Kurdistan (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group (re-named KADEK in 2002), was responsible for the vast majority of terrorism-related events (and casualties), which disproportionately affected the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey, in which the PKK has focused its activities. Most terrorist attacks over the past two decades have been bombings or shootings that produced < 10 casualties per event. From 1984 to 2003, 15 terrorist attacks produced > or = 30 casualties (eight shootings, five bombings, and two arsons). The maximum number of casualties produced by any of these events was 93 in the Hotel Madimak arson attack by the Turkish Islamic Movement in 1993. This pattern suggests that terrorist attacks in Turkey rarely required more than local systems of emergency medical response, except in rural areas where Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are routinely provided by regional military resources. The last decade has seen the development of several key systems of local emergency response in Turkey, including the establishment of the medical specialty of Emergency Medicine, the establishment of training programs for EMS providers, the spread of a generic, Turkish hospital emergency plan based on the Hospital Emergency Incident Command System, and the spread of advanced training in trauma care modeled after Advanced Trauma Life Support.