Living with Risk. A global review of disaster reduction initiatives

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Living with Risk: A global review of disaster reduction initiatives
Guiding vulnerabilty studies and mitigation measures in the the health sector
In order to ensure that technical knowledge is passed to other countries, PAHO will continue to promote
an exchange of ideas between professionals and governments in order to advance the idea of preventing
avoidable losses in the health sector from natural disasters. Despite technical advances that have been
available to support health sector initiatives against natural disasters, many have not been implemented in
new or existing health facilities. This has been due to either the lack of planning, insufficient resources or
simply the lack of apparent interest on the part of government authorities or potential financial supporters.
Unfortunately, many of these projects have failed, more from a lack of interest to do things responsibly
than from a lack of resources.
This topic has provoked considerable interest in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although nothing
has changed drastically from these efforts, an attempt has been made to move the agenda of disaster
reduction forward by the publication and distribution of relevant information by PAHO and other institutions.
Moreover, many hospitals have decided to reinforce their facilities in light of the risks of disasters.
In order to further develop this successful approach of disaster risk reduction, there is a need to continue
the promotion and organization of studies about vulnerability of the built environment and facilities
essential to public health with the joint participation of the academic, private and health sectors.
Source: PAHO, 2002
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PAHO has promoted this topic since the
beginning of the 1990’s in Latin America and
the Caribbean. Nevertheless, vulnerability
reduction in the services for water and sanitation
systems yet has a long way to go. They so
far have concentrated mainly on the immediate
needs of the population without encouraging a
wider analysis and application of disaster prevention
initiatives. This is due to several reasons,
with some related to the considerable
number of institutions involved with water and
sanitation and the absence of leadership at
national or local level. It is also partially a result
of the great geographical extent of these services
and the complexity of the technical solutions
involved.
Photo: Osorio, PAHO
Advances have been made in the development
of technical manuals for disaster prevention
and in the capacity to reduce the vulnerability
of water treatment facilities against natural disasters,
based on the experiences of individual
countries. On the other hand, technical publications
that fully list criteria for building or
protecting critical facilities from damage by
natural disasters have not yet been developed.
A list of such criteria is vital for the construction,
as most of those considerations are only
available in the literature for building methods
but they are not more widely elaborated for
general awareness or utilization.
The result of these initiatives has been to familiarize
certain organizations such as the Pan-
American Engineering Association for the Public
Health and Environment – la Asociación Interamericana
de Ingeniería sanitaria y Ambiental
(AIDIS) with prevention issues. In the same
way, improvements have been made in the promotion
of the topic in different sectors such as
in the management of water facilities. This has
allowed the topic of disaster risk reduction to
be included in the legislative measures related
to disaster management issues.
Some countries like Peru have established legal
guidelines for the health sector to encourage
the inclusion of disaster reduction activities in
its action plans. However, there has been very
little elaboration on the technical knowledge to