In many Caribbean countries, it is common that ambulances responding to accidents with a large number of casualties have no formally-trained medical technicians on board. Other agencies, such as police and fire services, also may arrive first at the emergency or disaster site, yet many of their personnel lack training on how to handle these situations. For many years, countries have expressed the need for a simple but formal course for all first responders. Therefore, in collaboration with many emergency medical technicians and Caribbean and U.S. doctors, PAHO has developed an emergency care and treatment course (ECAT) for the Caribbean.
The course, which is available on CD-ROM, addresses basic medical response for disaster and emergency situations. The course includes a participant’s manual, tips for the instructors, a PowerPoint presentation and review tests. Participants will benefit most from this new course if they are familiar with other PAHO courses on mass casualty management and incident command systems.
The CD can be ordered from PAHO's Emergency Preparedness Program ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ). The contents can also be downloaded here. Some of these files are very large and may take some time to download.
Basic material for the course
- Instructions for Planning the Course
- List of Equipment Necessary
- Participant Manual
- Tips for Instructors
- Course Slides
Support materials
- Scenarios for Final Test
- Pretest
- Mid Course Exam
- Final Exam 1
- Final Exam 2
- Course Evaluation Facilities
.