Luc JM Mortelmans

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Verified

Luc verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• MD, FESEM, FRBSS
• Emergency Physician at Ziekenhuis Netwerk Antwerpen

Objective Expanding staff levels is a strategy for hospitals to increase their surge capacity. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether emergency health care workers (HCWs) are willing to work during crises or disasters, and which working conditions influence their decisions. Methods HCWs in the emergency departments (EDs) and intensive care...

INTRODUCTION • Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) incidents pose increasing transborder risks globally, necessitating enhanced health sector preparedness. • No published study has proposed a prototype for a unified healthcare readiness checklist or cohesive training and response guidelines for CBRN incidents across the Middle Ea...

Objective Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) incidents require meticulous preparedness, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This study evaluated CBRN response operational flowcharts, tabletop training scenarios methods, and a health sector preparedness assessment tool specific to the MENA region. Met...

Introduction Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) incidents pose a significant threat globally, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region due to its complex geopolitical differences and fragile health infrastructure in most countries. Despite notable efforts to enhance CBRN preparedness in MENA countries, thes...

Objective Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) events with multiple casualties are rare events, but preparedness is crucial for hospitals to respond properly. This study evaluated the preparedness and disaster planning of German hospitals for CBRN incidents. Methods In a cross-sectional study, German hospitals with level III (hig...

This study aims to identify different frontline emergency response workforce's perceived knowledge of hazards and their willingness and motivations to go to work during them. An online version of the "Fight or Flight" survey was distributed and collected from Norwegian emergency personnel during the spring of 2023. Findings reveal a gap between the...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, violence targeting healthcare reportedly increased. Attacks against healthcare can severely hamper the public health response during a pandemic. Descriptive data analysis of these attacks may be helpful to develop prevention and mitigation strategies. This study aimed to investigate trends regarding COVID-19-related at...

Impact of COVID-19 on hospital disaster preparedness

Background Following World War II, Western Europe has not been a major conflict zone, so the military role had been merely defensive. Nevertheless, militaries remain a frequent target globally, and particularly in regional conflict areas, as reported in a recent study illustrating the vulnerabilities of American military installations. The objectiv...

Background The Netherlands score low on the terrorism index. However, in December 2023 the terrorist threat has increased to such an extent that the Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security raised the threat level to 4 ('substantial'). The objective of this study was to identify and characterize all documented terrorist attacks...

Background Health care is one of the critical sectors that needs protection against physical and cyberattack threats. Recent European legislation focuses on the safety measures for health care organizations. Regional conflicts, wars, and the anti-science narrative during the COVID-19-pandemic, show that health care is an important target. In this...

Background Hospitals are vulnerable targets for terrorism and extreme violence due to their easy accessibility and the high density of patients, staff and visitors. Nonetheless, little is known about the hospitals’ awareness of these risks, and to which extent these facilities protect themselves from violence. Methods This was a cross-sectional su...

Background: Terrorist attacks have the potential to be mass casualty events, causing multiple injuries and deaths. High injury rate attacks will particularly place a high burden on emergency medical systems. This study aimed to assess if there is a difference between attacks with high injury rates and high fatality rates. Methods: The top 100 terro...

Objectives: Belgium is not only prone to inland terrorism but also attracts terrorist factions aiming at various political, diplomatic, military, and/or religious targets. This study aimed to identify and characterize all documented terrorist attacks in Belgium reported to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) over a period of 50 years. Methods: T...

Background Workplace violence, including violent extremism, is a growing concern in the healthcare environment. Furthermore, there has been a disproportionate rise in the rate of terrorist attacks on hospitals during the past two decades. Hospitals are vulnerable targets due to their easy accessibility and their high density of patients, staff and...

Background: The Flemish speaking, northern part of Belgium has a history of terror attacks. Apart from that, we see worldwide a disproportionate rise in the rate of terror attacks on hospitals and health care workers. Hospitals are particularly vulnerable due to their easy accessibility, visibility online and their high density of patients, staff a...

Objective: Expanding staff levels is a strategy for hospitals to increase surge capacity. This study aimed to evaluate whether emergency healthcare workers (HCWs) are willing to work (WTW) during a crises or disaster and which working conditions would influence their decision. Methods: HCWs of emergency departments (ED) and intensive care units (IC...

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, violence targeting healthcare reportedly increased. Attacks against healthcare have the potential to impair the public health response and threaten the availability of healthcare services. However, there is little systematic understanding of the extent and characteristics of healthcare attacks in the settin...

Introduction: This study evaluates the perceptions of preparedness and willingness to work during disasters and public health emergencies among 213 healthcare workers from 10 ministries of health hospitals in the southern region of Saudi Arabia, which is exposed to the risk of disasters such as flash floods in wadis, fires, sandstorms, armed confli...

Introduction: Emergency and disaster situations have a major impact on hospitals, some of which are already overloaded daily. The recent COVID-19 outbreak, attacks in Brussels, floods in Wallonia and influx of Ukrainian refugees show that the risk of facing a disaster and involvement of local hospitals (and stakeholders) is real. However, how hospi...

Background: Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the recent Russo-Ukrainian war that started in 2022, were triggers that radically changed the perception of security in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The on-going Russian hybrid war has resulted in a renewed global interest in the safety and security of many countries (eg, the Nordic-Baltic...

Background: Saudi Arabia has made extensive efforts to manage disasters using unique national approaches; however, challenges and obstacles concerning disaster health handling persist. The nation has a reactive strategy to disaster management with a need for increased involvement of health professionals in disaster management and improvement of hea...

Introduction: Terrorist attacks against hospitals and health care providers have disproportionally increased during the last decades. A significant proportion of these attacks targeted abortion clinics and abortion providers. In the light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, an increase of anti-abortion terrorist attacks is anticipated. Ther...

Introduction: In July 2021, several European countries were affected by severe floods with water levels of the river Meuse reaching a record high. VieCuri Medical Center (Venlo, the Netherlands) is a hospital located directly adjacent to this river, and in response to the flood threat it was decided to completely evacuate the hospital. The aim of t...

Background: The on-going Russo-Ukrainian war has resulted in a renewed global interest in the safety and security of nuclear installations and the possibility of nuclear disasters caused by warfare and terrorism.The objective of this study was to identify and characterize all documented terrorist attacks against nuclear transport, nuclear faciliti...

Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic enabled a situational type of terrorism with mixed racist, anti-government, anti-science, anti-5G, and conspiracy theorist backgrounds and motives. Objective The objective of this study was to identify and characterize all documented COVID-19-related terrorist attacks reported to the Glob...

Background: Mass gatherings are vulnerable to terrorist attacks and are considered soft targets with potential to inflict high numbers of casualties. The objective of this study was to identify and characterize all documented terrorist attacks targeted at concerts and festivals reported to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) over a 50-year period....

Disaster Health Education in Saudi Arabia

Previous pandemics have been (mis)used for (geo)political reasons, for terrorism purposes and in times of conflict. COVID-19 has been no exception with populist politicians challenging the relations with China calling it the ‘Chinese virus’, certain state actors setting up cyberterrorist actions against health care organizations in the United State...

Nuclear risks in wartime.

Checking hospital preparedness of all acute hospitals in the city of Antwerp, Belgium

Reflections on preparedness for warfare in Europe

Evaluation of the deployment of the medical disaster plan in a multi casualty bus crash.

This study evaluates the perceptions of preparedness and willingness to work during disasters and public health emergencies among 213 healthcare workers at hospitals in the southern region of Saudi Arabia by using a quantitative survey (Fight or Flight). The results showed that participants’ willingness to work unconditionally during disasters and...

Background Hospitals are expected to provide their essential services under all circumstances, including disasters and crisis situations. However, crises and disasters may disrupt essential hospital functions, and necessitate evacuation of the facility. Data on the prevalence and causes of hospital evacuations is limited, whilst realistic evacuatio...

Background Saudi Arabia has made extensive efforts to manage disasters using unique national approaches; however, challenges and obstacles concerning disaster health handling persist. The nation has a reactive strategy to disaster management with a need for increased involvement of health professionals in disaster management and improvement of heal...

Background: Violence against primary care providers (PCPs) has increased during the current pandemic. While some of these violent acts are not defined as terrorist events, they are intentional events with an aim to disrupt, kill, or injure. Despite their pivotal role in health care, little is known about the risk for PCPs as targets of terrorism....

The COVID-19 pandemic showed how anti-government, anti-science and anti-vaxxer rhetoric collide in an international movement against vaccination and lockdown measures. We assessed if Belgian physicians were threatened by anti-vaxxers using an online survey. We assessed what the impact was on their clinical activities and how they coped with anti-va...

Letter to the editor as a reaction to the following article: ‘The distribution of potassium iodide tablets: is Belgium prepared for a nuclear incident?’ Vindevogel et al. describe in their study the limited preparedness for nuclear incidents of the Belgian population and pharmacies. By means of previous studies, we want to illustrate that the knowl...

Background Hospitals are expected to provide their essential services under all circumstances, including disasters and crisis situations. However, crises and disasters may disrupt essential hospital functions, and necessitate evacuation of the facility. Data on the prevalence and causes of hospital evacuations is limited, whilst realistic evacuatio...

Introduction: Terrorists increasingly aim at so-called soft targets, such as hospitals. However, little is known about terrorist attacks against Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Objective: This study aims to review all documented terrorist attacks against EMS that occurred world-wide from 1970-2019 using the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Me...

Background: Analysts have warned on multiple occasions that hospitals are potential soft targets for terrorist attacks. Such attacks will have far-reaching consequences, including decreased accessibility, possible casualties, and fear among people. The extent, incidence, and characteristics of terrorist attacks against hospitals are unknown. There...

Background The modern concept of terrorism has its roots in the “old continent” of Western Europe, more specifically in France, during the “Reign of Terror” period of the French Revolution. At the time, this form of state terror had a positive connotation: it was a legitimate means of defending the young state. While no single accepted definition o...

Due to the similarity in skills and assets, Civilian-Military collaboration has emerged as one of the most reliable partnerships during the disaster and public health emergency management to address all necessary elements of surge capacity, i.e., staff, stuff, structure (space), and systems. This study aimed to evaluate this collaboration before an...

Previous pandemics have been used/misused for (geo)political reasons, in wars/genocides and for terrorism. COVID-19 has been no exception with the former American president challenging the relations with China calling it the ‘Chinese virus’, and Russia and China setting up cyberterrorist actions against health care organizations in the United State...

Methods: The GTD was used to search for all terrorist attacks against hospitals between 1970-2019. Analyses were performed on temporal factors, location, attack and weapon type and number of casualties or hostages. Chi-square tests were performed to evaluate trends over time and differences in attack types per world region. Background: Analysts hav...

The impact of the first COVID-19 wave on the internship and education of Flemish senior medical students.

The cooperation of the military and civilian teams in disasters.

Civil - Military Cooperation and the impact of Covid-19.

overview of terrorist attacks against hospitals

The COVID19 pandemic has demonstrated that emergency departments (EDs) needed to reorganize their operations rapidly. This study investigated the impact of the pandemic on structural and logistical issues at EDs and measures taken. Belgian EDs were surveyed on the implemented changes at the start of the pandemic in relation to the four S's in disas...

ntroduction: On 11 March 2020, the World Health organization (WHO) declared the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – Corona-2 (SARS – CoV-2) virus a pandemic. This current pandemic has demon- strated that EDs need to reorganize rapidly and to restructure their operations to adequately respond to the increasing surge capacity. This study performed an...

Objective To analyze the evacuation preparedness of hospitals within the European Union (EU). Method This study consisted of 2 steps. In the first step, a systematic review of the subject matter, according to the PRISMA flow diagram, was performed. Using Scopus (Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands), PubMed (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD)...

Impact of the first COVID-19 wave on Belgian ED's

Evaluating the preparedness on - and the impact of the first COVID-19 wave on Belgian ED's

Introduction:Historical changes have transformed Sweden from being an offensive to a defensive and collaborative nation with nationaland international engagement, allowing it to finally achieve the ground for the civilian–military collaboration and theconcept of a total defense healthcare. At the same time, with the decreasing number of internation...

Introduction: Historical changes have transformed Sweden from being an offensive to a defensive and collaborative nation with national and international engagement, allowing it to finally achieve the ground for the civilian-military collaboration and the concept of a total defense healthcare. At the same time, with the decreasing number of internat...

This study evaluates the perceptions of preparedness and willingness to work during disasters and public health emergencies among 213 healthcare workers at hospitals in the southern region of Saudi Arabia by using a quantitative survey (Fight or Flight). The results showed that participants' willingness to work unconditionally during disasters and...

Evaluation of disaster training, -knowledge, - competence and willingness to work amongst ambulance personnel in the southern French - speaking part of Belgium.

Describing the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on senior medical students in Flanders

Background: With a dense petrochemical industry and several nuclear installations, Belgium is at risk for CBRN (Chemical Biological Radionuclear) incidents. The Brussels bombings revealed the risk for terror attacks and the country is prone to natural disasters as floods. Ambulance personnel will be the first to be confronted with the care for vict...

Background: Throughout history medical students have been mobilized to cope with pandemics as seen in the Spanish Flu outbreak, SARS and H1N1 and H5N1 outbreaks. On the other hand, there is a serious impact of safety and quarantine measures on the education and training of these students. To evaluate the impact of the recent Covid-19 outbreak on se...

Exploring the willingness to respond of Flemish ambulance personnel in different virtual disaster scenarios.

Introduction Clinicians working in emergency departments (ED) play a vital role in the healthcare response to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNe) events. However, ED clinicians’ individual and workplace preparedness for CBRNe events is largely unknown. Aim The aim of this research was to explore Australian ED nurses...

study on knowledge and education on disaster management in Flemish ambulance personnel. Preliminary figures as we're still collecting data.

Samenvatting De laatste jaren werd de wereld meermaals opgeschrikt door terroristische aanvallen. Dit artikel behandelt de verschillende facetten waarbij ziekenhuizen en terrorisme samenkomen. Hoe berei-den ziekenhuizen zich voor om te gaan met grote aantallen slachtoffers? Wat als ziekenhuizen zelf geviseerd worden als doelwit? Een adequate en her...

The impact of terrorism on hospitals and caregivers In recent years, the world has been repeatedly rocked by terrorist attacks. This statement paper deals with different aspects of hospital policy and disaster response planning that interface with terrorism. Research demonstrates that the availability of necessary equipment and facilities (e.g., pe...

evaluating the lack on disaster education in the curriculum of Flemish senior nursing students

Describing the effect of scientific evaluation of specific CBRN training in Dutch ambulance teams

Objective: To explore the effect of military training on medical officer’s CBRN preparedness. Methods: A survey on training; estimated risk, - knowledge and – capability and willingness to work was presented to all military medical officers. Results were compared with civilian Emergency Physicians. Results: Response rate was 39%. Risk estimatio...

Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was performed. All 93 Dutch hospitals with an emergency department (ED) were sent a link to an online survey on different aspects of CBRN preparedness. Besides specific hospital information, information was obtained on the hospital's disaster planning; risk perception; and availability of decontaminati...

Results of my masterthesis submitted to the University of Antwerp on august 2016

Study/Objective Willingness to work, promoting factors, and hospital disaster management, including the role of the hospital disaster coordinator. Background Following a disaster, hospitals are at-risk for sudden crowding of victims. However, can they recruit extra staff willing to work? Is disaster management a daily concern? Methods This mixed-...

In recent years, the world has been rocked repeatedly by terrorist attacks. Arguably, the most remarkable were: the series of four coordinated suicide plane attacks on September 11, 2001 on buildings in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, USA; and the recent series of two coordinated attacks in Brussels (Belgium), on March 22, 2016, involving two...

FACTS: Tuesday, 22nd of March 2016, at 07:58, Belgium was hit by a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Brussels National Airport terminal, shortly followed by a second one closer to the airport exit. At 09:11, a second attack was carried out at Maalbeek Subway station in the European quarter of Brussels. A suicide bomber blew...

Methods: A survey looking for demographics, hospital disaster planning, estimated risk and capability for disasters, training, and willingness to work, and a set of six content assessment questions to evaluate knowledge, were presented to emergency pediatricians and pediatric emergency physicians in specialized tertiary centers. Results: The res...

Introduction: Historically, medical students have been deployed to care for disaster victims but may not have been properly educated to do so. A previous evaluation of senior civilian medical students in Belgium revealed that they are woefully unprepared. Based on the nature of their military training, we hypothesised that military medical student...

Background Medical students have been deployed in victim care of several disasters throughout history. They are corner stones in first-line care in recent pandemic planning. Furthermore, every physician and senior medical student is expected to assist in case of disaster situations, but are they educated to do so? Being one of Europe’s densest popu...