BOOK REVIEWS

Disaster Medicine and International Relief Multilingual Dictionary: English, French, Spanish, Arabic. By S.W.A. Gunn
Dictionnaire multilingue de Médecine des catastrophes et des Secours internationaux
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Holland, 1989

Bum surgeons and related health personnel are always liable to be involved in situations of fire disaster, and the Mediterranean Burns Club has, from its inception, been particularly interested in disaster medicine. We therefore welcome this most timely and remarkable multidisciplinary encyclopaedia of disasters, all the more so that it covers four key languages of the Mediterranean basin.
Natural or technological catastrophes almost by definition call for outside assistance and international aid. The multiplicity of governments, agencies and individuals from different parts of the world, with different professions, languages and cultures converge upon the disaster site with the best intentions of helping the victims, who are themselves of a different language and background. Communication among these diverse people and a certain understanding of the different technical terminology of the many disciplines and activities involved become paramount if the inherent difficulties of the disaster are not to be compounded with an additional communications disaster. A common ground of understanding between all the helpers and donors - doctors, nurses, government officials, engineers, meteorologists, planners, the media and the many other workers involved - is therefore indispensable.
All the likely terms that may be encountered not only in the medical field but also in meteorology, administration, transport, geology, nuclear and conventional war, civil defence and other disaster situations are given in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, and the hundreds of terms clearly defined constitute in fact the standard vocabulary of disaster medicine and emergency management. Section 2 also gives the names and abbreviations of several hundred major organizations involved in international relief, while section 3 gives the international units and measures in different languages encountered in disaster work.
With the wealth of information that makes this work much more than a dictionary, this book is definitely the indispensable tool for all disaster managers, whatever their background and wherever they may be called upon to work: in the field, at the planning board, or just before setting out on an emergency mission. The only guide of its kind, it has been tested in actual situations, in training courses and in programming sessions over many years and in different language settings. As the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disaster Co-ordination says in his Foreword, this book is a most valuable contribution to the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction and to the tasks of all those who strive to lighten the burden of disasters. We strongly recommend it, and we are particularly proud that the author is none other than the President of our MBC.

Available from Kluwer Academic Publishers, Medical Division, Box 17, 3300 AD Dordrecht, Netherlands.