Mass casualty incidents can rapidly overwhelm available health services, requiring a coordinated response from emergency medical services, hospitals and other emergency response actors. To support Kazakhstan’s efforts to strengthen preparedness, WHO will convene a 2.5-day workshop in Astana in collaboration with the Ministry of Healthcare of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the University of Oviedo through the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health in Disasters and Emergency Care, within the Pandemic Fund project (single country project in Kazakhstan). The event aims to introduce a practical approach to mass casualty management (MCM) training, using complementary simulation methods for pre-hospital and hospital teams and exploring their wider use in Kazakhstan for emergency and pandemic preparedness.
Technical sessions will provide a shared foundation in governance and coordination, activation thresholds, command and control, triage, patient distribution and transport. Participants will also examine hospital emergency response plan activation, surge capacity and continuity of essential services, with a focus on linking decisions at the scene with the response of receiving hospitals.
Practical simulation exercises will be central to the workshop, giving participants the opportunity to try different approaches to learning and practicing MCM at both pre-hospital and hospital levels. The MassCas tabletop game, a simple and low-cost simulation tool developed by the University of Oviedo and the Prehospital Care and Disasters Research Group (GIAPREDE) at the Health Research Institute of Asturias (ISPA), Spain, will support pre-hospital exercises on resource activation, scene organization, triage and transport coordination. The game has received the Medical and Health Technology Innovation (ITEMAS) recognition of impact on the health system from Spain’s Ministry of Health and Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Hospital exercises will use interactive tabletop methods to practice plan activation, incident command and management of patient surge. Facilitated debriefs will capture operational lessons and participant feedback on how these approaches could be adapted for further training in Kazakhstan.
The workshop will provide an opportunity for national counterparts to assess the proposed training approaches and consider how they could support a broader MCM capacity-building programme. Drawing on the exercises and discussions, participants will identify priorities and next steps, with the aim of laying the groundwork for a phased rollout to other regions of Kazakhstan in 2027.