Essential emergency & critical care

Essential emergency & critical care

All around the world, acutely ill and injured people seek care every day. Frontline providers manage children and adults with medical, surgical and obstetric emergencies, including injuries and infections, heart attacks and strokes, asthma and acute complications of pregnancy. Prioritising an integrated approach to early recognition and resuscitation reduces the impact of all of these conditions. WHO’s Clinical Services and Systems team is dedicated to strengthening the emergency care systems that serve as the first point of contact with the health system for so much of the world, and to supporting the development of quality, timely emergency care accessible to all.

Emergency Care Toolkit
The WHO Emergency Care Toolkit (ECT) is an open access bundle of interventions, developed to be implemented in emergency units within hospitals, particularly in resource limited settings. The main aim of the ECT is to support systematic care of the acutely ill and injured within hospitals.
WHO/ICRC Basic Emergency Care course
The Basic Emergency Care Course (BEC) is a joint WHO/ICRC/IFEM learning programme for first contact health workers who care for patients with acute illness or injury. BEC teaches a systematic approach to the initial assessment and management of time-sensitive conditions where early intervention saves lives.
Prehospital toolkit
WHO’s prehospital toolkit is a bundle of products designed to help strengthen prehospital emergency care systems. These tools are intended to help address commonly identified gaps in the main components of a prehospital system (governance, operations, prehospital provider training, equipment & medication, communication and quality improvement). They can be used to support the development of prehospital services in all resource settings.
Mass Casualty Management
Mass casualty incidents (MCIs) are characterized by a sudden surge in patients that overwhelms the capacity of local medical resources, often resulting in preventable mortality and morbidity. Facility-based EUs play a critical role in managing MCIs, ensuring timely recognition, triage, resuscitation and disposition of patients. In response, WHO has developed comprehensive resources to enhance the ability of healthcare providers and institutions to effectively prepare for, respond to and recover from MCIs.
WHO Clinical Registry
The WHO Clinical Registry provides standardized case-based data on patient presentation and management in emergency units, allowing for comparison, aggregation and performance monitoring at facilities and across the health system.

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Improving care of the injured

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