Diploma to prepare emergency workers for major incidents launches six years after Manchester Arena terror attack

Apublic inquiry into the atrocity laid bare a series of catastrophic failings by the emergency services

A diploma to prepare emergency workers for major incidents has been launched in response to the Manchester Arena terror attack more than six years ago.

Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb in his rucksack in the City Room foyer area of the Arena at the end of a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande on May 22, 2017. The blast killed 22 people and injured hundreds of others.

An inquest held into Abedi’s death this week concluded he died from ‘suicide while undertaking a terror attack’. The medical cause of death was blast injuries.

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The Diploma in Major Incident Management (DipMIM) being launched by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh comes after a long-running public inquiry into the atrocity laid bare a series of catastrophic failings by the emergency and security services, with chairman Sir John Saunders concluding there was a 'total failure of joint working that night'.

The £32m inquiry that came to a close in June of this year, heard evidence on the so-called ‘care gap’ - the gap or delay in first responders treating the injured after a mass casualty incident like the Arena atrocity. The DipMIM aims to fill the ‘care gap’.

Sir John Saunders, who has shown his support for the diploma, said:"Many of the responders from the emergency services who bravely rushed to the scene of the Manchester Arena bomb did not know what they could do to best assist the victims.

“The evidence at the Inquiry showed how