Preparing hospitals for disaster management

According to The Hindu, a workshop on hospital safety, first of a series of workshops for hospitals being held in five Indian cities, was organised at the behest of the WHO, by the Institute of Land and Disaster Management in collaboration with the Geo Hazards Society, a global partner of WHO. "Hospitals are the lifelines where people would be brought in huge numbers when a disaster — floods, earthquakes, major fire, landslips, terrorist attacks or tsunami — strikes. Hospitals should be structurally safe to withstand a disaster such as earthquake, but more importantly, a hospital should be able to function even after a disaster," pointed out Hari Kumar, president, Geo Hazards Society.