World Health Day 2009 focuses on the safety of health facilities and the readiness of health workers who treat those affected by emergencies.

Health centres and staff are critical life-lines for vulnerable people in disasters - treating injuries, preventing illnesses and caring for people's health needs.

The goal is to ensure that health facilities and services are able to function in the aftermath of emergencies and disasters, protect the lives of patients, serve the affected population and keep health workers safe.

This means:• ensuring the structural resilience of health

structures with existing technologies; • keeping the equipment and supplies of these

health facilities intact should an emergency happen;

• improving the preparedness and risk reduction capacity of health workers and ;

• involving communities in this effort.

• Safe health facilities are those that are accessible and function at maximum capacity immediately after a disaster event.

• This is not just the work of the health sector and health professionals alone. 

• All of us need to work together with other sectors and experts from other fields such as urban planners, architects, engineers to bring not just awareness, but more importantly action.

The vision of a national programme for safe hospitals could be: “the health community and partners will work together to ensure health facilities are safe and continue delivering health care effectively in emergencies.”

The goal of the programme might be to: “save lives, reduce injuries and illness and improve health outcomes inemergencies,” while a set of programme objectives should include:

• Protect the lives of staff, patients and visitors in health facilities.

• Deliver health services in emergencies.• Protect the economic investment in health facilities.• Facilitate community recovery after emergencies.

Planning for making health facilities safe in emergencies

• Develop comprehensive national policies as well as specific policies focusing on building safety and emergency preparedness of health facilities and staff.

• Coordinate programmes related to the safety of health facilities and emergency preparedness in the ministry of health and other health agencies.

• Integrate health facility policies, programmes and plans with national disaster risk reduction platforms and

• Institute emergency management plans in alliance with national emergency services and civil protection

organizations.

• Advocate safe and cost-effective health facility development

• Ensure that all new health facilities include hazard and vulnerability assessments.

• Apply technical guidelines for safe development of health facilities.

• Assess existing health facilities to identify the priorities for retrofitting and other action.

• Implement independent mechanisms to control and supervise infrastructure projects, such as by involving qualified professionals to work with the project team.

Provide guidance and promote best practice for:• assessment and maintenance of safety of health facilities

before and after disasters;• emergency preparedness programmes in health facilities;• multi-task training to manage basic life-saving emergency and

surgical interventions;• development of safe and resilient health facilities in safe

locations;• retrofitting and reconstruction of existing vulnerable facilities;• safe working environments for health workers;• safe infrastructure for health facilities, including continuity of

essential services for power, water and• waste disposal, and of medical and health supplies of during

times of emergency.

• Develop training courses in safety and emergency preparedness in undergraduate, graduate and continuing professional courses.

• Integrate safety and emergency preparedness into standards for licensing and accreditation of health facilities.

India - HAZARD PROFILE

• India is among the world's most disaster-prone areas. • It is vulnerable to wind storms spawned in the Bay of

Bengal and the Arabian Sea, earthquakes caused by active crustal movement in the Himalayan mountains, floods brought by monsoons, and droughts in the country's arid and semi-arid areas.

• India has also become much more vulnerable to tsunamis since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

• Almost 57% of the land is vulnerable to earthquake (high seismic zones III–V), 68% to drought, 8% to cyclones and 12% to floods.

Thank you for watching this presentation

madhukar katiyar

Main Sources: www.who.in www.searo.who.int www.safehospitals.info www.paho.org