An Adolescent Sport Team Management During a Natural Disaster; Report on the Field

The team physician has a major role in managing medical problems of a travelling adolescent team (1-3). In addition to the normal responsibilities, unexpected disasters could always be a challenge. A natural disaster can be defined as any multiple casualty incident that overwhelms the response capabilities of the available resources (4). On 25 April 2015 at 11:56 local time, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal (5) during AFC U-14 (The Asian football confederation, under 14 years old) girls regional football championship. Dozens of aftershocks followed, including a 6.7 magnitude earthquake on 26th April 2015 at 12:54 local time. The earthquake resulted in 8,604 casualties (6, 7). The Iranian national football team participated in AFC U-14 girls regional championship 20th-26th April 2015, and the author was the team physician of the Iranian team at the time. To my knowledge, there is just one article on role of medical directors in natural disasters occurring for travelling teams which has been published after the recent earthquake in Nepal (8). There are few articles available to discuss what a team physician will face in a national disaster during a sport event. The main focus of this topic is to make a better view of what a team will confront during an earthquake and which decisions could be more appropriate as a team physician.