Disaster Planning

In the event of a mass casualty event in the UK or elsewhere, please contact the EPRR Team of NHS England

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Major Incident Plan Overview

There has been a steady incidence of serious events involving multiple burn injury casualties within the British Isles throughout the 20th century. It must be acknowledged however that none of these incidents have involved massive numbers of casualties. Analysis of such incidents has been analysed and published in the world literature.

Following each serious event there have been calls both in the media and from professionals working in the burn care community for the creation of a national plan to help manage any future events. Recognition of this need was crystallised in one of the central recommendations in the National Burn Care Review, published in March 2001, which called for the creation of a plan for the British Isles.

In 2003 the National Burn Care Group (NBCG) was created with the task of implementing the recommendations of the National Burn Care Review. As part of their work a subgroup was created to consider a plan for the management of a major incident involving significant numbers of burn injuries.

The membership of the group were chosen so as to represent those services most intimately involved in the planning of a major incident response, in an attempt to ensure that any plan for burn injury integrated as fully as possible with all existing and anticipated changes to the major injury response major incident response in the NHS.

The other members of the group were chosen because of their personal knowledge and experience of a major incident involving burns or their knowledge of the organisation of burn care services. Project management support was provided by the NBCG.