The National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) is a section of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsible for managing Federal government's medical response to major emergencies and disasters. The overall purpose of the NDMS is to supplement an integrated National medical response capability for assisting State and local authorities in dealing with the medical impacts of major peacetime disasters and to provide support to the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs medical systems in caring for casualties evacuated back to the U.S. from overseas armed conventional conflicts.
NDMS’s federal partners include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). NDMS also interfaces with state and local Departments of Health, as well as private hospitals. (Note: NDMS was returned to DHHS (US Department of Health and Human Services) on January 1, 2007 by an Act of Congress).
Read more about National Disaster Medical System: Organization, Operations
Famous quotes containing the words national, disaster, medical and/or system:
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“When disaster waves, I try not to wave back.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“If science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Some rough political choices lie ahead. Should affirmative action be retained? Should preference be given to people on the basis of income rather than race? Should the system be—and can it be—scrapped altogether?”
—David K. Shipler (b. 1942)