PAHO Countries Seek Safer Hospitals

In just one minute, an earthquake wiped out 97 percent of hospital beds in the city of Pisco. Peru's 8.0 magnitude earthquake on Aug. 15 destroyed one of two hospitals in Pisco and left the other severely crippled. It was one more reminder of the importance of making hospitals disaster-safe.

With the Peru earthquake fresh in memory, delegates to the Pan American Sanitary Conference called for new action to ensure that hospitals can remain functional after disasters through the adoption and implementation of national risk reduction plans.

According to PAHO data, 67 percent of health facilities in Latin America and the Caribbean are located in disaster risk areas. When a hospital goes out of service, on average 200,000 people lose access to health care. That translates into nearly 24 million people in the PAHO region who have lost access to health care due to disaster-damaged facilities over the past 10 years. In a disaster situation, the loss of hospital services means lost opportunities to save lives.

"We need to make sure that hospitals are safe from disasters, so they can continue to provide their services when they are needed most," said Jean-Luc Poncelet, head of PAHO's disaster and assistance program. "This is no longer a dream. We have a number of pilot projects in PAHO member countries that have shown that it can be done."

Making hospitals safe means protecting infrastructure and equipment but also ensuring the continued functioning of essential services such as water supply, sanitation, laboratories, laundry facilities, and kitchens. Strict building codes are important but so is independent monitoring of operations and maintenance. Protecting healthcare workers is also paramount, since they are the main players and promoters for ensuring the ongoing provision of health care.

PAHO member countries have made significant progress in the past year in promoting disaster-resistant hospitals. Eleven member countries now have national policies on safe hospitals, and 21 have taken action to reduce disaster vulnerability in the health sector. A new hospital safety index, developed by the PAHO/WHO Disaster Mitigation Advisory Group, became available in 2006 to help countries assess the likelihood that a given health facility will remain functional following a disaster. Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Mexico, Peru and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have carried out pilot surveys using the index.

In a resolution, PAHO countries urged the development of national policies on safe hospitals and called for actions including building new hospitals so they can remain functional following disasters, assessing weaknesses in existing health facilities and making long-term plans to eliminate them, making risk reduction part of the accreditation process for health facilities, adopting appropriate norms and standards, and monitoring the safety of all health facilities in the national network. They also urged the creation of partnerships among disaster management organizations, international financial institutions, universities, scientific and research institutions, and local authorities and communities.

More information on safe hospitals can be found here.