DISASTER

MANAGEMENT
“A STITCH IN TIME, SAVES NINE”
 “ A serious disruption of the functioning of a
community or a society involving widespread
human, material, economic or environmental
losses and impacts, which exceed the ability of
the affected society to cope using its own
resources”

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNIDSDR, 2009)
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define Disaster
• Know the types of disasters
• How to manage any types of disasters
• Emergencies and disasters do not only affect the health and
well-being of people, but a large number of people are also
displaced, killed, and injured
• Disasters occur anywhere, anytime!
 10 MOST
SIGNIFICANT
DISASTERS
WORLDWIDE BY
DEATH TOLL
FROM 1980 TO
JULY 2022
TYPES OF DISASTERS
A. Natural Hazards
- geophysical: earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami
- hydrological: flood, landslides, wave action
- meteorological: cyclone, storm surge, tornado, cold wave,
lightning, heavy rains, fog, frost, hail, heat-wave,
sandstorm, dust storm
- climatological: drought, extreme cold/hot temp., forest wildfire,
glacial lake outburst, subsidence
- biological: epidemics, insect infestations
B. Human-induced disasters
- rise in population, rapid urbanization and industrialization,
development within high-risk zones, environmental degradation, and
climate aggravates vulnerabilities to various kinds of disasters
- arising from accidents (industrial, road, air, rail, river or sea,
building collapse, fires, mine flooding, oil spills
- chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear
Morbidity results from disasters
• Injuries
• Emotional stress
• Epidemic of disease
• Increase in indigenous diseases
DISASTER MANAGMENT
Disaster Risk management systemic defined
as:
• A systematic process of using administrative decisions, organizations,
operational skills, and capacities to implement policies, strategies,
and coping capacities of the society and communities to lessen the
impacts of natural hazards
5 Fundamental aspects of Disaster
Management
1. Disaster response
2. Disaster preparedness
3. Disaster mitigation
DISASTER IMPACT AND RESPONSE
Search, Rescue and First-aid
• Occurs after a major disaster
• Most immediate help comes from the uninjured survivors
• Organized relief services will be able to meet only a small fraction of
the demand
Field Care
• most injured persons converge to health facilities, using whatever
transport is available
• Providing proper care to casualties requires that the health service
resources be redirected to the new priority
• Bed availability and surgical services should be maximized
• Provisions should be made for food and shelter
• A center should be established to respond to the inquiries from
patient’s relatives and friends
• Priority should be given to victims’ identification
Triage
• “first come, first treated” principle is not followed.
• consists of rapidly classifying the injured on the basis of their severity
• Higher priority is granted to victims whose immediate or long-term
prognosis can be affected
• Uses the 4 color code system
Tagging

• All patients are identified

with tags
• Names, age, place of
origin, triage category,
diagnosis, and initial
treatment
Identification of the Dead
• Taking care of the dead is an essential part of the disaster
management
• A large number of dead can also impede the efficiency of the rescue
activities at the site of the disaster
• Care of the dead includes:
• Removal of the dead from the disaster scene
• Shifting to mortuary
• Identification
• Reception of the bereaved relatives
Relief Phase
• Begins when assistance from outside starts to reach the disaster area
• The most critical health supplies are those needed for treating
casualties and preventing of communicable disease
• 2 factors:
1. The type of disaster
2. The type and quantity of supplies available locally
Epidemiologic Surveillance and Disease
Control
• Overcrowding and poor sanitation
• Population displacement
• Disruption and contamination of the water supply, damage to the
sewage system
• Disruption of routine control programs
• Ecological changes
• Displacement of domestic and wild animals
• Provision of emergency food, water, and shelter in a disaster situation
from different or new sources may be a source of infectious disease
Vaccinations during Disasters
• WHO does not recommend typhoid and cholera vaccines for routine use in
endemic areas.
• Vaccination program requires a large number of workers who could be better
employed elsewhere.
• Mass vaccination may lead to a false sense of security about the risk of the
disease and to the neglect of effective control measures
• Mass vaccination of the population against tetanus is usually unnecessary.
• Natural disasters may negatively affect the maintenance of ongoing national or
regional eradication programs against polio and measles
Nutrition
• Infants, children, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and sick persons are more
prone to nutritional problems after prolonged drought or after certain types of
disasters like hurricanes, floods, land or mudslides, volcanic eruptions, and sea
surges involving damage to crops, stocks or to food distribution systems
• immediate steps for ensuring that the food relief program will be effective
include
(a) assessing the food supplies after the disaster ;
(b) gauging the nutritional needs of the affected population ;
(c) calculating daily food rations and need for large population groups
(d) monitoring the nutritional status of the affected population
Rehabilitation
• The final phase in a disaster should lead to the restoration of the pre-
disaster conditions
• Rehabilitation starts from the very first moment of a disaster.
• first weeks after the disaster, the pattern of health needs will change
rapidly, moving from casualty treatment to more routine primary health
care
• Services should be reorganized and restructured
• Priorities also will shift from health care towards environmental health
measures
• Water supply
• Vector control
• Food safety
• Basic sanitation and personal hygiene
• Water Supply
• survey of all public water supplies should be made
• essential to determine the physical integrity of system components, the
remaining capacities, and the bacteriological and chemical quality of the
water supplied.
• The first priority of ensuring water quality in emergency situations is
chlorination
• chlorine level to about 0.2-0.5 mg/liter
• Chemical contamination and toxicity are secondary concern in water quality
• Water has to be trucked to a disaster site or camps.
• water tankers should be inspected to determine fitness, and should be
cleaned and disinfected before transporting water
• Basic sanitation and personal hygiene
• communicable diseases are spread through fecal contamination of
drinking water and food
• efforts should be made to ensure the sanitary disposal of excreta.
• Emergency latrines should be made available
• Washing, cleaning, and bathing facilities should be provided to
displaced persons.
• Food Safety
• Poor hygiene is the major cause of food-borne diseases in disaster
situations
• kitchen sanitation is of utmost importance
• Vector Control
• special concerns are dengue fever and malaria (mosquitoes),
leptospirosis and rat bite fever (rats), typhus (lice, fleas), and
plague (fleas).
• Flood water provides ample breeding opportunities for
mosquitoes
Disaster Mitigation in the Health Sector
• involves measures designed either to prevent hazards from causing
emergencies or to lessen the likely effects of emergencies
• Flood mitigation works
• appropriate land-use planning
• improved building codes
• reduction or protection of vulnerable populations and structures.
• Mitigation measures aim to reduce the vulnerability of the system
• Medical casualties can be drastically reduced by improving the
structural quality of houses, schools, and other public and private
buildings.
Disaster preparedness
• Emergency preparedness is "a program of long-term development
activities whose goals are to strengthen the overall capacity
• capability of a country to manage efficiently all types of emergency
• The objective of disaster preparedness is to ensure that appropriate
systems, procedures, and resources are in place to provide prompt
effective assistance to disaster victims thus facilitating relief measures
and rehabilitation of services.
• reasons for community preparedness are:

Members of the community have the most to lose from being

vulnerable to disasters and the most to gain from an effective and
appropriate emergency preparedness program;
Those who first respond to an emergency come from within the
community.
 Resources are most easily pooled at the community level and
every community possesses capabilities.
Sustained development is best achieved by allowing emergency-
affected communities to design, manage
Policy Development
• "the formal statement of a course of action"
• The policy is strategic in nature and performs the following functions :
(a) establish long-term goals;
(b) assign responsibilities for achieving goals
(c) establish recommended work practice
(d) determine criteria for decision-making.
Personal Protection in Different Types of
Emergencies
• Do not use the telephone, except to call for help, so as to leave telephone
lines free for the organization of response.
• Listen to the messages broadcast by radio and the various media so as to
be informed of the development.
• Carry out the official instructions given over the radio or by loudspeaker.
• Keep a family emergency kit ready.
In all the different types of emergencies, it is better:
1) to be prepared than to get hurt
2) to get information so as to get organized
3) to wait rather than act too hastily
Floods…
• What to do before-hand
• find out about risks in the area
• Small floods can be foreseen by watching the water level after heavy rains
and regularly listening to the weather forecasts
• During a flood
• Turn off the electricity
• Protect people and property:
• Beware of water contamination
• Evacuate danger zones
• After a flood
• wait until the water is declared safe
Hurricanes, Storms, Tornadoes
References:
• WHO
• Statistica
• Textbook of Prevention and Social Medicine by Gupta (your ebook!)
Chapter 16.
• Center for Disease Control