Who they are

The main emergency medical services are provided by the SAMU – Services d’Aide Médicale Urgente. Assistance Publique – Hópitaux de Paris (AP-HP) is the public hospital system in Paris that covers a population of 12 million. SAMU de PARIS is one of the services of AP-HP. APHP is the largest hospital system in Europe. Its mission is to provide free medical phone advice and in some cases pre-hospital treatment or optimised hospital orientation. During disaster situations, SAMU de PARIS is in charge of coordinating the hospitals for advanced medical and emergency care, including CBRN incidents. On a strategic level the hospitals and emergency units are coordinated by l’Agence Régionale de Santé which are responsible for implementing hospital organisational plans for the treatment of large number of victims.

How they are organised

AP-HP provides healthcare, teaching research, prevention, education and emergency medical service in 52 branches. It employs more than 90,000 people including 15,800 physicians in 44 hospitals and treats more than 5.8 million patients a year. There are strong links to universities of Paris through its 7 colleges of medicine including odontology and pharmacy. There are almost 100 SAMU call centres in France and each one is run by the local major hospital. SAMU de PARIS coordinates 8 SAMU groups, 70 mobile intensive care units for medical care of victims in the field and their transportation to appropriate hospitals.

Their expertise

The SAMU medical team in the field use an Information system based on victim identification using unique numeric ID and incorporates emergency level categorisation, evolution, medical treatment, hospital admission and ground and air transportation. In the last 30 years, SAMU de PARIS have provided medical services during international crisis such as the earthquakes in Mexico (1985) and Nepal (2015).

Role in the project

SAMU de PARIS have the responsibility of medical leader in the IN-PREP project. Their role is to analyse and evaluate the way humanitarian groups are prepared and deployed for intervention in European countries. Recommendations and improvements will be identified and channelled into implementation proposals for joint European action. They participate in 3 work packages including the end user recruitment process, collection of end user needs and editing of the Crisis Management Handbook.  Furthermore SAMU de PARIS support all the IN-PREP demonstrations and exercises by conducting triage as part of their medical assistance.

Watch Professor Benoit Vivien from SAMU de Paris (AP-HP) talk about Key gaps in Crisis Management https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_czjUvWm3Ow