The hall’s medical station is a small room of 10-15 m² with water, a drain for hygiene, locked storage for medicines and sharp instruments, and a door to the outside at least 120 cm wide for a stretcher. In an emergency the main hall becomes a ward with beds on the floor, cots or benches, but a hall used as a ward cannot also be used for meetings or meals, and infectious patients must be kept apart from the rest.
Part of Community Gathering Hall
The medical and first aid station is the part of the hall set aside for examining and treating the sick and injured, with the open hall as overflow.
A Small Room Daily, A Whole Hall In A Crisis
The gathering-hall guide’s medical mode: the small room, 10-15 m², serves as the primary medical space; in emergencies the main hall becomes a ward, with beds on the floor, cots or benches; supplies of medicines and sharp instruments must be locked up; and the room needs water access and drainage for hygiene. It sets door openings for stretcher access at a minimum of 120 cm clear. The treatments themselves are in First Aid and the medicine articles.
Worked Example: A Ward In The Main Hall
Inputs, all assumed: a bed or cot of 0.8 × 1.9 m = 1.5 m²; a clear 0.8 m beside each bed so a carer can reach the patient; shared aisles to the exits; hall 10 × 12 m = 120 m².
- A bed with its access strip and its share of the aisle takes about 4 to 6 m² of floor.
- Beds in the hall: 120 ÷ 6 = 20 to 120 ÷ 4 = 30.
- For comparison, sheltering people who need no nursing takes 2 m² each in the hall guide, so a ward holds roughly one third to one half as many people as a shelter.
These are planning illustrations, not a medical standard. The point is that a ward in a 120 m² hall holds tens, not a hundred, and every bed used displaces the hall’s other functions (Emergency Shelter Capability).
What You Need
- Clean water and a basin, with a drain that leaves the building away from any well (Greywater Management)
- A lockable cabinet for medicines and sharp instruments
- A table, a bed and a screen in the small room
- A door of at least 120 cm to the outside
- Hand washing with soap or ash at the door (Hand Washing)
Method
Step 1: Fit the small room beside an outside door, at the quiet end of the hall.
Step 2: Supply it: a basin, clean water, clean cloth, a lockable store.
Step 3: Plan the ward layout in advance, with a marked clear aisle from every bed to an exit.
Step 4: Separate the infectious by distance and by a screen or a separate building if one exists, and use separate cloths and basins.
Step 5: Clean between patients and keep sharp instruments and medicine locked.
Common Mistakes
- A medical room opening only into the hall, forcing stretchers through a crowd.
- Unlocked medicine, which children find.
- Putting infectious cases in the same row as wounded.
Safety
The ward is a fire and infection risk
A hall full of beds and bedding is fuel, and the sick cannot move fast. Keep heaters and lamps away from the beds, keep the aisles and exits clear, and do not put infectious patients where they share air and washing water with others. Do not give a dose without an authoritative source; none is set out here.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Emergency Shelter Capability — the hall as a refuge
- Combine with: Camp Sanitation — hygiene when many people share a building