News

28 March 2017—Thirty staff members from the Health Bureau of Macao SAR participated in a two day workshop organized by the WHO Emergency Medical Teams (EMT) Initiative. This workshop helped brief health professionals on the mechanisms of an EMT response in the event of a disaster or a disease outbreak.

The sessions also covered lessons learned from previous emergencies and highlighted the operational components required to create and deploy EMTs. Presentations, group and table top discussions were facilitated by representatives from the EMT Secretariat of WHO in Geneva and experiences were shared from the Philippine Department of Health, and the Australian Medical Assistance Team. 

Macao is the second country to undertake a workshop on the EMT Initiative this year and is looking to improve their current response practices on local sudden-onset-disasters and outbreak. In turn, this will help them conduct an assessment on the possibility to develop a WHO classified Emergency Medical Team.