THE NATURAL DISASTER
RELEATED TO HEALTH PROBLEM :
INDONESIA EXPERIENCE
Fachmi Idris
President of
Confideration Medical Association in Asia Oceania
Lectures of Public
Health Of Medical Faculty of Sriwijaya University, Indonesia
Experience of disaster has led to
management cycles strategies concepts for handling them. Those strategies are
based on :
1. The
definition oh the disaster itself, that is whether it consists of sudden impact
event or not
2. The
kind if disaster, is it natural or a man made disaster or both and
3. The
loss of lives or economic impact or both
In “ normal condition”, disaster
management cyles must start from preparedness and how to socialize the
community about the early warning signs, continuing to prevention and
mitigation program, reconstruction until rehabilitation. Actually the disaster
management cycles must not start from preparedness. It depends on whwn the
impact happened.
In Indonesia there are two kinds
of disasters, namely natural disaster and man made disaster. For the natural
disaster, Indonesia has land slides, volcanic eruption, earthquake, tsunami,
flood, tropical storm and “small tornadoes” (Indonesia term : Putting beliung)
and major epidemic diseases. For the man made disasters, Indonesia has
terrorist attacks, railroad accidents,aircraft crashes, sport disasters, fires
and shipwrecks.
In the context of health, for
example earthquake, the problem in Indonesia when handling the situation
related to people displacement and destruction of health facilities. The
problem of displacement is the characterof Indonesia people (victims) that
prefer to stay close the area of disaster and or stay in houses of relatives
near to unsafe area of disaster. The problem for health facilities is that,
frequently facilities are damaged and there are significant losses of some
medical equipment or laboratory materials. These problems make the health
service collapse, and at he same time the children and elderly became most
vulnerable without adequate health service. Infected wounds and respiratory
problems occur in trapped victims. But, different from tsunami that happened in
Aceh Indonesia in2004, many earthquakes in Indonesia did not kill victim
massively unless there are bad housing construction in the area of earthquake.
Another example of natural
disaster related to health problrm is sudden flood. It may cause so much death
caused by trauma, and it also leaves some severe injury. Hypothermia and respiratory infection were usual but not epidemics. There are also problems in
providing clean water supply leading the deterioration of sanitation causing an
increases of enteric and other water related diseases, like common diarrhea.
In term of Indonesia experience
when natural di sasters happen, the primary problem is the need to rehabilitate
the health services and facilities, intensify epidemiological surveillance and vector control, and increase the public
awarness on the true danger of the situation. Based on those experiences, it is
important to a high standard, and mitigation measures program in hospitals are
vital for avoiding loss of patient and staff, ensuring that facilities and
health services will function properly after disaster, and made victims always
far away from the area disaster .
Pre - Conference Seminar
November 10-12-2011, Taipei Taiwan
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