Dealing with disaster victim identification: a review

Background: Disaster is an unfortunate event that occurs suddenly and cause death and injury of many people. Dealing with this situation and proper management after disaster is a very challenging task. This article gives an overall general overview about the procedure of managing a disaster especially focussing on identification of victims of disaster. The article describes about teams and their overall functions involved in management of disaster and also an overview about methods of disaster victim identification. Central Emergency Rescue unit is first to reach the situation and starts the rescue operations. Central Investigation Unit investigate the extent of disaster. Victim Identification Unit is focused towards identification of victims of disaster. ‘Command’ of victim identification unit takes all the decisions required and issues all the orders for actions. Management and communication staff is the collection point of information between Recovery, Evidence collection, and Disaster victim identification unit. Recovery and Evidence Collection Team recovers the dead bodies from the disaster site. AM Team collects ante mortem data from various sources for identification of victims. PM Team collects the data from deceased victims (dental, medical, forensic information). Disaster Investigation Unit investigate cause of disaster