WHO and UNICEF call for strengthened risk reduction measures to protect hospitals and schools from the impact of disasters

GENEVA – The World Health Organization and UNICEF today called on governments to strengthen risk reduction measures in four key areas so that health and education systems are able to cope with disasters, including the risks from climate change. These are:

* Build school and health infrastructure according to disaster resilience standards;
* Conduct assessment of the safety of hospitals and schools and take remedial action to make them safer;
* Ensure all hospitals and schools implement emergency and disaster preparedness programmes, including staff training and exercises;
* Listen to and support communities in disaster risk reduction through education and training.

WHO and UNICEF highlighted these issues during the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, a key gathering of the world’s risk reduction community organized by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in Geneva from 16-19 June 2009.

Disasters have a major health, educational, economic, physical, and psychosocial impact on the most vulnerable, notably children, women and aged persons. Besides destroying human lives, disasters damage hospital and school infrastructures, disrupt educational cycles, exacerbate poverty, force children to drop out of school, and affect the resilience of communities.

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which caused some 240,000 deaths in ten Asian and African countries, raised global awareness about the importance of disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness.

The massive earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan Province in 2008 left 88,000 people dead or missing, 400,000 injured, and 11,000 hospitals damaged or destroyed. Over 12,000 schools or 40 per cent of all schools in Sichuan were damaged, resulting in thousands of children being killed or injured. These events highlight growing concern over the effects of disasters on education and health.

Children are among the most at risk and an estimated 175 million children annually will be affected by disasters. In recent years, large numbers of schools have been destroyed by disasters resulting in the loss of lives of children and the stalling of access to education. Children also suffer from the psychosocial effects of disasters, hindering their opportunities for development.

“The destruction and carnage inflicted on hospitals, schools, and the people who use them are senseless losses that could have been prevented in many cases,” said Dr Eric Laroche, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Action in Crises. “Such tragedies can be avoided or reduced if governments adopt disaster risk reduction strategies aimed at protecting people’s health. One prime way of doing this is making hospitals safer by enforcing and implementing building codes to ensure quality construction, training staff to be prepared for emergencies and assessing existing health facilities to learn what, if any, vulnerabilities they may have.”

A High Level Panel on Safe Schools and Hospitals, jointly organized by UNISDR, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO and World Bank during the Global Platform consultation, covered the experience of France, Mexico, Philippines and Tajikistan in making hospitals and schools safer from disasters and emphasized the vital role that scientific evidence plays.

Mexico has demonstrated that it is possible to make hospitals safer by applying a Hospital Safety Index to hundreds of hospitals across the country and strengthened them to be more resilient and better prepared to respond to emergencies and disasters.

Risk reduction is an imperative for education as well as health.
“The school must be a safe place that protects children and defends their right to education,” said Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF’s Director of the Office of Emergency Programmes. “However, children can also serve as powerful protagonists for change. The integration of disaster risk reduction into the school curriculum equips children with knowledge of the risks, and what actions can be taken to mitigate the risks. Education is therefore an important aspect of risk reduction. Not only is it a child’s right, but education also protects lives and safeguard development gains.”

UNICEF and WHO are active members of the UNISDR system and advocate globally for the protection of schools and hospitals from disasters. The current and previous biennial World Disaster Reduction campaigns organized by UNISDR have been devoted to “Disaster risk reduction begins at schools” (2006-2007) and “Hospitals Safe from Disasters” (2008-2009). WHO is also devoting its 2009 World Health Day to the theme “Save lives. Make hospitals safe in emergencies.”