After Tragic Fire, U-M, Taiwanese Doctors Study Crisis Planning

Disaster response is the focus of the first publication to emerge from a new partnership between the University of Michigan Medical School and Taiwan’s largest hospital system, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital.

Colleagues at U-M and Chang Gung, in Linkou, worked together to analyze the latter institution’s response following a 2015 amusement park fire that injured nearly 500 people, many severely.

“This was a tragic, high-profile event, unmatched by any other disasters that we’ve seen in the literature about severe burn injuries. But it demonstrated the efficiency of the Taiwanese disaster preparedness program,” said IHPI member Kevin Chung, a U-M Surgery Professor and the paper’s senior corresponding author. “Studying the incident was a great way to not only showcase our new partnerships in Taiwan, but the lessons learned can also help improve readiness and patient care everywhere.”