Emergency Trauma Response to the Mosul Offensive, 2016-2017
April 2nd, 2018Fox, H., Stoddard, A. & Davidoff, J. (2018). Emergency trauma response to the Mosul offensive, 2016-2017: A review of issues and challenges. Humanitarian Outcomes, March.
“…..Despite certain weaknesses and limitations, the WHO-coordinated response succeeded in implementing a
large-scale, military-style referral chain system in highly difficult conditions and unquestionably saved lives.
An independent analysis of the data performed by a research team at John Hopkins Centre for Humanitarian
Health estimates that the WHO-coordinated trauma referral pathway saved between 1,500 and 1,800 lives –
approximately 600-1,330 civilians and the remaining majority combatants.
The total number of people treated is impossible to independently verify. WHO reporting cites that as of 7 August
2017, ‘some 20,449 people from Mosul city were referred through the established trauma pathways’. But these
figures include patients being counted multiple times as they passed through the referral pathway. The Iraqi
Department of Health estimated that 10,000 to 12,000 ‘medical activities’ were performed…….Despite these constraints, between October 2016 and November 2018, MSF performed 20,334 emergency room
consultations (of which 4,135 were ‘war trauma’3 cases and 1,594 were ‘red’ cases4) and 31,242 primary health care
consultations. These emergency room and primary health consultations resulted in 3,601 surgical interventions,
1,178 deliveries and 2,647 inpatient admissions……”
case study by Johns Hopkins. : Document