The World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine promotes the worldwide development and improvement of emergency and disaster health and humanitarian relief. Every two years at the World Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine, the WADEM Humanitarian Award for Excellence in Disaster Management is presented to an organization involved in disaster relief that has promoted awareness of quality excellence in humanitarian relief efforts, or demonstrated quality achievements of Disaster Response Organizations, or publicized successful quality strategies specifically designed for disaster relief organizations. Recipients of the award receive an engraved plaque.
2011 Award Recepient - UK-Med
The 2011 award was presented to UK-Med at the 17th WCDEM in Beijing, China. The award was accepted by Dr. Anthony Redmond (pictured to the right) on behalf the organization.
UK-Med grew out of the South Manchester Accident Rescue Team, a local medical team acting in support of rescue and ambulance services in Manchester. Later on, the team responded to earthquakes in Armenia and Iran, the Kurdish refugee crisis on the Iran/Iraq border, and the Lockerbie air disaster.
It is a non-governmental organization (NGO), initially established in 1995 to facilitate the provision of health workers from across the UK to support the hospitals in Sarajevo during the Balkans war. Subsequently, it has dispatched teams to a range of countries and crises including: Cape Verde, Kosovo, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, China, and Haiti.
UK-Med supports education and training for health workers in developing countries and continues to facilitate the provision of UK health care workers, who volunteer their services to countries during conflict and catastrophe. Having responded to the massive earthquake in China in 2008, it subsequently ran emergency medicine and spinal cord injury rehabilitation training programmes in China and supported Chinese health care workers coming to the UK for further training.
The Kamedo Reports received the WADEM Humanitarian Award for Excellence in Disaster Management at the 16th WCDEM in Victoria, Canada in 2009. The award was accepted by Dr. Per Kulling.
Humanitarian Medical Assistance (HuMA) from Japan was awarded the WADEM Humanitarian Award for Excellence in Disaster Management in 2007. It was accepted by Takashi Ukai in Amsterdam at the 15th WCDEM in Amsterdam.
