Latin America and the Caribbean
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Strategy for Disaster Reduction Latin America and the Caribbean |
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ISDR Inform - Latin America and the Caribbean |
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MImproving
Access to Health and Disaster Information Abstract The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean as a region vie for the unfortunate distinction of having the greatest exposure to disasters of all regions in the world. Between 1971 and 1995, 1,824 disasters were recorded in the Americas, of which 1,246 were produced from natural phenomena, and 578 the result of unnatural causes. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch caused severe damage in Central America, especially in Honduras and Nicaragua, the countries selected as the primary beneficiaries of the CRID/NLM project. Natural phenomena such as hurricane Mitch clearly cause enormous suffering. The human cost is in terms of the number of deaths and injured. There is also serious deprivation in terms of health care and related services such as food supply, drinking water, housing, and environmental sanitation. During the aforementioned twenty-five year period, the annual average mortality rate in the region was 8,956, while 3,781,314 were injured or otherwise affected.1 Mitch made apparent,
again, the need for a multisectoral approach to disaster reduction. Coordinating
an approach to disaster reduction that includes all relevant sectors requires
timely availability of reliable information from many and varied sources.
The ability to collect, manage, disseminate and exchange information is
essential and steps must be taken to ensure the high level capacity of
human and technological infrastructure. For example, information is needed
in the areas of detection and description of hazards, the design of early
warning and response systems, community education, health management in
disaster situations, coordination of the agencies involved in disaster
management activities, and damage assessment required to bring about rehabilitation
in various sectors. The demand for information has risen among a growing number of disaster preparedness and prevention planners as the availability of information on health issues related to disasters has increased in volume and improved in quality. Information produced about health issues in disasters in the Latin American and Caribbean region, in particular, has seen important advances in terms of usefulness in preparedness planning, strategic decision-making and operational coordination of humanitarian emergencies. This is in large part, due to the attention that has been placed on information collection and management throughout the last decade by such groups as PAHO, the United Nations International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (now the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and the Coordination Center for Natural Disaster Prevention in Central America (CEPREDENAC). These institutions and others have called to attention, the fact that many of the “lessons learned” during disasters do not find their way into the mainstream of health and medical literature. This is because the experience of many health professionals engaged in disaster work frequently goes unpublished or consists of needs assessments by NGOs or agencies of the UN System which often have limited circulation; presentations made at conferences, of which there is little record; or in academic or other training courses, for which there are often no recorded curricula. It is also the case that because of inadequate access to information technology, lack of training in how to find and manage information and lack of awareness of what information is available communities and local authorities are frequently uninformed about health issues important to their well being. In an effort to address
these issues, NLM has developed this project with PAHO and ISDR and has
awarded a contract to FundaCRID, a non-governmental foundation, whose
mission is “to promote a culture of disaster prevention in Latin
America and the Caribbean” in support to the Regional Disaster Information
Center CRID. To accomplish its mission, CRID develops and supports activities
that have a direct effect on the improvement of scientific and technical
information related to disaster management. Project Objectives
With a view to sustaining these activities in the future, the project has selected university libraries in these two countries as priority centers to gather and disseminate technical and scientific disaster and health information. In addition to the CRID center in Costa Rica, the four partner sites in Honduras and Nicaragua are:
These centers will be strengthened in three areas:
Because these information services will be provided and accessed through the Internet, there will be other important benefits for the two target countries and others:
The project partners expect that broad distribution of existing information on disaster management in Honduras and Nicaragua will be achieved through the execution of these activities. Who will benefit from the project?
CRID’s mission is to promote the development of a prevention culture in the Latin American and Caribbean countries, through the compilation and dissemination of disaster-related information, and the promotion of co-operative efforts to improve risk management in the Region. It is located in the facilities of the National Emergency Commission (CNE) of Costa Rica and today has six partners2. Since its creation, CRID has collected important technical information on emergencies and disasters available in Latin America and the Caribbean, and has made great efforts in disseminating and distributing this information so that it is accessible to the thousands of interested users in the Region. Taking advantage of, and strengthening the existing CRID infrastructure and experience to support Honduras’ and Nicaragua’s libraries and information centers would avoid duplication of efforts, save resources and indirectly benefit the other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The National Library
of Medicine (NLM), on the campus of the National Institutes of Health
in Bethesda, Maryland, is the world’s largest medical library. The
Library collects materials in all areas of biomedicine and health care,
as well as works on biomedical aspects of technology, the humanities,
and the physical, life, and social sciences. The Specialized Information
Services (SIS) Division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is responsible
for information coverage and services for several areas, including toxicology
and environmental health, AIDS, and outreach to special populations. For more than 20 years, the Pan American Health Organization’s Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief Coordination Program has contributed to improving access to technical and scientific information on disasters in all the countries of the Region. PAHO is represented in each country of the Region, and its technical staff collaborates closely with national authorities in technical cooperation activities. This project will greatly advance PAHO’s ongoing efforts to strengthen health and disaster information management.
CRID, Stacey Arnesen,
Project Manager, National Library of Medicine Division of Specialized
Information Services,
Notes 1 International Federation for Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, World Disaster Report, 1997, Oxford: 1998.
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Hurricane
Mitch which hit Central America in the fall of 1998 left Honduras and
Nicaragua worst. Honduran casualties numbered more than 5,500 dead and
over 8,000 missing. More than 2,500 died in Nicaragua and nearly 900 were
reported missing. In both cases, major economic and social lifelines were
crippled, including health facilities and communications services. Within
a year of this tragedy the United States’ National Library of Medicine
(NLM) with the Pan American Health Organization began considering a special
project they might make together to support the rebuilding and improvement
of local and national health information infrastructure in Honduras and
Nicaragua. The result of this consultation was the decision by NLM in
September to award a contract to the Costa Rica-based non-governmental
foundation FundaCRID to work with key “partners” in Honduras
and Nicaragua to develop an approach to collecting and making available
health information related to disasters. The principal technical partner
for NLM will be CRID, the Regional Disaster Information Center located
in Costa Rica. In addition to funding the initiative, NLM — principally
through its Specialized Information Services division — will be a
partner in the process and will provide training and technical support.
In this effort they will be supported by the Center for Public Service
Communications. The Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization
which is already one of CRID’s major partners, is also deeply committed
to supporting the project and will work with both NLM and CRID to plan
and implement the project along with the International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction, that is coordinating CRID.
The
broad objective of this partnership is to contribute to disaster reduction
in the Region. Not only will this positively affect health by providing
access to timely and accurate health information, it will also, over time,
contribute to economic growth and social development.
During
this project the dissemination and distribution of information will be
channeled through Centro Regional de Información Sobre Desastres
(CRID), located in San Jose, Costa Rica, which was created for this purpose
in May 1997. Its organization was based on the structure and experiences
of the Disaster Documentation Center, which was initiated by PAHO/WHO
in 1990. CRID is convened by ISDR (before IDNDR). 
In
addition to the immediate justification supporting the rebuilding of the
health information infrastructures of the two countries hardest hit by
hurricane Mitch, NLM will be a partner in the process, and expects to
benefit from the partnership in a number of ways: increasing the scope
of mission-related services by developing models for comprehensive handling
of non-traditional or unpublished literature on the health and medical
aspects of disasters; working with PAHO and CRID to adapt some of its
information “products and services” to be more useful to Spanish-speakers
in the United States and in other countries of the world; and by exploring
effective means of collecting and exchanging medical and other health
information in geographically isolated and disaster affected environments.
NLM and its partners expect that lessons learned from involvement in this
project will also be valuable in the United Sates in disaster situations
and in providing similar services to rural and other underserved populations.