Abstract

Abstract -- Since 921 Chi-Chi earthquake, our government has been engaged in establishment of a disaster response system and gained much achievement. These include the improvement of infrastructure of National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) such as the development of Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT), the establishment Taipei Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and the integration of disaster response planning (DRP). However, there are still many weak points for the development of a well-established disaster response system. The infrastructure of our NDMS also needs more improvements, either hardware or software. In this article, we tried to analyze the present NDMS in Taiwan by using the SWOT analysis model. The overall performance will be:
Strengths: The government has been consistently engaged in the development of a good NDMS system.
Weaknesses: There is still no professional authority or organization that is responsible overall education and training, integration of planning, incorporation into standard operations planning, and constant monitoring.
Opportunities: The international communications promote understanding and modification of the policies. The persistent stimuli from various kinds of disasters keep the government high alerting in disaster response in Taiwan.
Threats: The progress in NDMS may be still lower than the real demand of disaster response.