WADEM 2023 in Killarney, Ireland (9-12 May 2023) ～For worldwide promotion of the ARCH Project～

The ARCH Project has been attended the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine Congress 2023 in Killarney, Ireland, accompany with Dr. Prasit Wuthisuthimethawee on behalf of Thai Taskforce of ARCH Project and Ms. Sukanya Sutthalak on behalf of Division of Public Health Emergency Management (DPHEM) as well as the Regional Coordination Committee on Disaster Health Management (RCCDHM) Secretariat as our counterpart organization in Thailand.

The 3 aims of this participation were; to disseminate the ARCH Project and disaster health management (DHM) development strategy through this congress; to find the way for the collaboration between ASEAN Academic Network on DHM and WADEM for future academic activities; and to widen our network with the academicians and organizations. At the site in Killarney, Japanese Advisory Committee members of the Project were there as well to join our discussion to support the Project.

【Presentations】*in order of the dates
９May：ASEAN Strategy for Enhancing Knowledge Management on Disaster Health Management （Ms. Aono）
10 May：Development of the Matrix for Regional Collaboration on Disaster Health Management in the ASEAN Region (Ms. Sukanya)
11 May：Regional Program for Knowledge Co-creation on Disaster Health Management in ASEAN and Japan（Mr. Kita）

ARCH Project has published the supplement journal magazine (Supplement 1) of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine (PDM) Volume 37, in 2022 during the extension phase of the Project. This is our first international journal publication with inviting 43 authors and co-authors from the relevant organizations of ARCH Project including ASEAN Secretariat, and the host countries of Regional Collaboration Drills in the past (Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia) for writing the papers. To transform the actual experiences into the systematic scientific knowledges is one of the challenges in DHM domain as well as is in demand, to involve proactively to the academic activities will be a good occasion to conduct scientific inspection what we have been done in DHM field.

During our stay in the congress, we had several questions or exchanging opinions in terms of establishing regional collaboration schemes by overcoming a political complex or cultural differences. Through this stay, we had recognized that successfully establishing regional collaboration mechanism through the ARCH Project can be a unique case study regarding to realization of multinational cooperation for disaster emergency response.

In the discussion with the board of directors of WADEM in 10 May, Dr. Yuichi Koido, Dr. Tatsuhiko Kubo, and Dr. Shinichi Egawa also joined to support the Project. Especially, as a very good news for us, Dr. Kubo has been elected as a new board of directors for the next 2 years. https://wadem.org/about/board-of-directors/ Dr. Donald Donahue, the new president of WADEM gave cordial remarks as “this is a very good opportunity for us to work together with AANDHM and we will find many ways to callaborate each other.” In near future, we will expect to invite him to the 2nd ASEAN Academic Conference on DHM which is planned to be held in upcomimng October.