Fostering disaster resilient communities across the globe through the incorporation of safe and resilient hospitals for community-integrated disaster responses.

The impact of catastrophic events on hospitals and communities is huge and continues to hinder progress in developing nations and industrialized countries alike. Over the last 10 years, the UN/ISDR has sponsored a series of global conferences to increase awareness of the importance of risk and vulnerability reduction and the need to build disaster resilient communities. In recognition that hospitals contribute to the health and resiliency of a community, ISDR has adopted the PAHO and WHO "Safe and Resilient Hospital" initiative. The primary focus of the initiative is to ensure the physical and functional integrity of hospitals during a disaster. Hospital resiliency also must encompass the ability to fully integrate hospital facilities and their services into an overall community response to prevent hospitals from becoming isolated from other responding organizations. In order to help promote the "safe and resilient hospital" initiative, during the 15WCDEM, three strategic objectives were identified for hospitals that meet SEARO Benchmark #5. These are: (1) establish tiers of standards (criteria) that define "safe and resilient" hospitals in diverse regions of the world; (2) develop a tool to assess the extent to which hospitals, meet the criteria for "safe and resilient" hospitals; and (3) apply the evidence derived from use of this tool to promote the concept of "safe and resilient" hospitals as an integral part of emergency preparedness, responses, and recovery, and maximize the political commitment from decision-makers within and outside the healthcare sector to support, protect, and integrate the initiative into a community-wide disaster response. Ultimately, attaining these objectives will protect the lives of patients and healthcare workers, ensure that hospitals are able to provide urgently needed and everyday medical care to the community they serve and minimize risk and vulnerabilities of patients, healthcare workers and other individuals within the community.