Doctors worked ‘in harmony’ after Paris attacks left 368 people injured

The demand for tourniquets to control blood flow in gunshot victims in the wake of the Paris attacks was so high that emergency services teams returned to hospitals without their belts.

And in what medics working in Paris hospitals on that fateful night describe as “a cruel irony”, some doctors initially believed that activation of the city’s emergency plan was a simulation exercise, because emergency personnel had actually taken part in an simulation earlier that day in the event of multiple shootings in the French capital.

The account of how doctors coped with a huge influx of wounded on the night of November 13 when a series of terrorist attacks paralysed Paris, leaving 130 dead and 368 injured, is recounted in chilling detail in an article in The Lancet.