International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction observed

GUWAHATI, Oct 14: The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction was celebrated across the globe today. The day holds significance in the wake of increasing disasters due to natural as well as man-made reasons resulting in huge damage of life and property in recent times.

One of the key areas to be highlighted in this regard is the vulnerability of children and the risk therein. The probability of damage during emergency is very high as children do not have adequate knowledge about the do’s and don’ts in dealing with such situations. Most of the children even do not know how to express their feelings, resulting in a communication gap. Considering the increasing threats in this regard, it is wiser to be ready to fight in case any untoward incident takes place.

Health care issues are of considerable importance. Utmost care should be taken so that public health centres as well as institutions giving primary and secondary treatment are safe from disasters. Safety of hospitals during disasters is very important. Considering the sensitivity over the issue, the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction along with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, marks the International Day for Disaster Reduction by highlighting the 2008-09 World Disaster Reduction Campaign dedicated to the safety of hospitals from disaster.

The WHO guidelines to make health facilities safer can be taken into consideration in this regard. These include: develop and implement national policies and programmes to make health facilities safe in emergencies, select a safe site for the health facility as well as to design and construct safe health facilities, assess the safety of existing health facilities, protect health workers, equipment, medicines and supplies, ensure that health facilities receive essential services, develop partnerships between health facilities and the community, develop an emergency risk management programme for individual health facilities, develop an emergency response plan for each health facility, test and update response plans with drills and exercises, train the health workers to respond to emergencies and lastly, evaluate and learn lessons from past emergencies and disasters. THE SENTINEL