title: Major burn disasters: lessons to be learned from previous incidents and a need for a national plan.
abstract: The current concerns regarding possible terrorist actions throughout the world have to be considered to be now even more relevant to the UK. To date, there seem to be no official plans for Scotland other than those "major disaster incident" ones for each major hospital. These are not specifically designed to cope with a large-scale incident in which the majority of cases are burns. Such an event could swamp the local casualty and Burn Units. A model for possible consideration, based on a Dutch proposal, is put forward as being one that could be usefully applied to Scotland or, indeed, the UK.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plastic Surgery and Burns, St. John's Hospital, West Lothian, Scotland. jcmcgregor@plasmac.freeserve.co.uk
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: McGregor
mesh_terms: D002053:Burn Units / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002056:Burns / Q000628:therapy*; D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005390:Fires; D006285:Health Planning; D006801:Humans; D012606:Scotland; D023481:Terrorism