Climate Resiliency, Emergency and Disaster Management
Scope:
The Climate Resiliency, Emergency and Disaster Management standard outlines an integrated and systems-based approach to emergency and disaster management for health and social services, in collaboration with the community served. A comprehensive strategy for emergency and disaster preparedness includes a hazard risk assessment, mitigation and response safety protocols, service continuity management, resource management, communications, training, and evaluation and recovery plans. The standard addresses natural disasters, extreme weather events, fires and wildfires, hostage, abduction, weapon, mass casualty incidents, and pandemics. The Standard takes a whole system, all hazard, and one health approach. A whole system approach involves emergency and disaster preparedness that are coordinated centrally across the organization, the health sector, community services and health authorities. Partnerships between health and non-health sectors are coordinated and may involve emergency services, public health, food safety, veterinary, agriculture and transportation services. An all-hazard approach recognizes the risks inherent in different types of hazards and acknowledges the risk reduction, emergency preparedness, response, training and community recovery may follow the same approach. A One Health approach recognizes the link between human health, animal health and the environment during emergency, disaster and climate related preparedness and response to reduce the consequences of zoonoses and the risks to public health and ecosystems. Climate change is creating ever increasing health inequities most especially for vulnerable populations and disadvantaged regions, by damaging infrastructure, interrupting supply chains, impacting access to medical services, and creating new health risks like vector borne disease, respiratory and heat related illnesses. Health systems need to adapt and build resilience through improved emergency preparedness plans to effectively respond to climate-related disasters.
Project need:
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “an estimated 1.4 billion people live in fragile, conflict affected and vulnerable settings. Eighty percent of people affected by health emergencies and 70% of cases due to epidemic-prone diseases are occurring in conflict-affected settings. A record number of people around the world, more than 69 million, have been forcibly displaced, many of whom are cut off from accessing basic health services.”1 Emergency and disaster management aims to reduce vulnerabilities to hazards and to promote resilience to cope with disasters. The Climate Resiliency, Emergency and Disaster Management Standard addresses the need to assess, plan and prepare for risks to the disruption of essential and continuous health services, or a surge in demand for health and social services. Coordinating with community emergency and public health services is an imperative for effective and safe emergency and disaster management. Climate action needs to be integrated into healthcare emergency management because climate change is significantly increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, which directly impact healthcare systems by causing disruptions to access and continuity of essential services, and posing increased risks to infectious, respiratory and heat related illnesses. Climate resilient infrastructure is becoming vital to providing safe care and evacuation, inclusive of back-up power, energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, fire resistant building materials, cooling and ventilation strategies, and flood protection.
Note: The information provided above was obtained by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) and is provided as part of a centralized, transparent notification system for new standards development. The system allows SCC-accredited Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), and members of the public, to be informed of new work in Canadian standards development, and allows SCC-accredited SDOs to identify and resolve potential duplication of standards and effort.
Individual SDOs are responsible for the content and accuracy of the information presented here. The text is presented in the language in which it was provided to SCC.