Disasters and other emergencies often result in significant impacts on people’s health, including the loss of many lives. Every new threat reveals the challenges for managing health risks and effects of emergencies and disasters. Deaths, injuries, diseases, disabilities, psychosocial problems and other health impacts can be avoided or reduced by health emergency and disaster risk management measures involving health and other sectors.
These Health EDRM Fact Sheets are an introduction for health workers engaged in health EDRM and for multi-sectoral partners to consider how to integrate health into their disaster risk management strategies.
The overview places disaster risk management in the context of multi-sectoral action and focuses on the generic elements of health EDRM disaster risk management, including potential hazards, vulnerabilities of a population, and capacities, which apply across the various health domains.
The accompanying fact sheets identify key points for consideration within a number of essential health domains. However, importantly, all health domains are inter-linked; each fact sheet should therefore be considered as part of the entire set and in conjunction with the overview.