We also preposition the supplies that we will need to address healthcare needs when disasters arise, ensuring a swift response. Additionally, we have comprehensive emergency preparedness and response plans in place, along with business continuity plans that focus on the safety of our staff members and on maintaining ongoing management of our core functions and programs during a disaster.
Emergency Preparedness Response Plan
Between emergencies, our Emergency Response Unit (ERU) focuses on refining our Emergency Preparedness Response Tool (EPRP), which enables us to develop response strategies ahead of time, assess local capacity and foster community awareness and involvement. Taking this approach helps us ensure that our responses to medical and humanitarian crises are effective and tailored to the unique challenges that each situation presents.
Training and Capacity Building
Training is the foundation of everything we do at International Medical Corps. By equipping communities with vital skills and knowledge, we help them to become their own best first responders when an emergency arises. Our training programs for healthcare providers and first responders, which are designed to improve community resilience and response capabilities, cover a wide range of critical topics, including advanced trauma life support; basic emergency care; mass-casualty preparedness and response; pre-hospital trauma fundamentals; primary trauma care; trauma nursing fundamentals; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear response; and Stop the Bleed™. A key highlight of these initiatives is our emphasis on “train the trainers”—ensuring that future instructors can continue teaching these topics to others for years to come.
In 2025, the ERU launched its online interactive Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Deployment Preparation Program, consisting of 21 modules covering 34 topics, including EMT orientation, core training and department-specific training that prepares roster members, country teams and volunteers for EMT deployment. The goal of the training program is to enhance International Medical Corps’ ability to deploy high-quality EMT responses both through ERU-led EMTs and through independently deployed country-mission EMTs.
Logistics and Prepositioning Supplies
Supply-chain preparedness is crucial to our emergency response strategy. We currently maintain prepositioned stock in our warehouses in three locations—Memphis, Tennessee; Panama; and Dubai—to reduce response times and ensure that medical supplies, equipment and emergency kits are readily available for dispatch to areas affected by disaster. We also identify alternative supply routes, to ensure that we can rapidly respond and get critical materials where they need to go during an emergency.
Our recent logistical achievements include coordinating shipments of supplies during the response to the multi-year conflict in Sudan, providing logistical support after catastrophic flooding in Libya, leading field hospital deployments in Gaza and managing hurricane responses. In addition to strategic prepositioning, our work with partners has been essential to our ability to quickly deliver critical resources across various regions.
Human Resources
We are able to quickly mobilize personnel during a crisis, drawing from a roster of medical professionals who are proficient in local languages and have experience in conflict and disaster situations. We recruit talented interns and volunteers in close collaboration with partners that include such organizations as National Nurses United, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, University of Connecticut and other US-based universities.
Response Management System
Our Response Management System—in which we monitor acute global events and protracted situations 24/7, consistently communicating with country and headquarters teams about potential emergencies and by tracking global events via news feeds and industry-specific dashboards—enables us to prepare for and rapidly respond to emergencies.
As of 2026, we’ve trained more than 9,000 people in 12 countries on basic emergency care, trauma care, mass-casualty management and a wide range of critical readiness topics.
In late 2025, the ERU trained 184 first responders in Nigeria, including hospital leadership from four hospitals who received mass casualty management training. After bombings in the Borno state capital in March 2026, those who had trained in our courses helped manage the response to these incidents.
After Hurricane Beryl hit Jamaica in 2024, the ERU trained 122 first responders in mass-casualty management and basic emergency care, improving national disaster preparedness and emergency response capacity. When Hurricane Melissa struck the island in late 2025, the first responders trained in our courses were among those who led the government’s response efforts across the island.
We conducted EPRP training in Lebanon in 2024 that significantly enhanced its preparedness and ability to later respond to conflict in the country.