Guest Editorial: Are we ready for the big one? Lessons from a brief war that could apply to New Zealand primary health care services following a major disaster

Abstract

Barry S Parsonson JaneMary Rawls Applied Psychology international and Children of Georgia nGO the experience of working with psychological trauma following exposure to conflict led to this editorial. In August 2008, Georgian military forces responded to military threats from the breakaway Georgian region known as South Ossetia by entering the territory. The military response from both Russian forces ‘exercising’ in the region and local militias was both swift and brutal. The five-day conflict led to an estimated 160 000 persons fleeing from the conflict zones near Tskhinvali in South Ossetia and the Shida Kartli region, particularly the city of Gori, as well as from similar military action in the western Georgian cities of Zugdidi, Poti and Senaki and the Kodori Gorge region of Abkhazia. In addition to displacement, numbers of these persons suffered significant personal trauma and loss, including having family members killed in the conflict, experiencing beatings and incarceration, rape and also destruction of homes and loss of property and livelihoods. Many of those caught up in the conflict had been traumatised in earlier regional wars in the early 1990s. Conservatively, 20% of this displaced population could be expected to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the effects of trauma on displaced families and military and emergency services personnel previously caught up in the conflict were evident two months later.