Natural disaster-Environmental health preparedness

This article will summarize a short, simple and comprehensive description of natural disaster preparedness and response, focusing on: • What they are in terms of qualitative and quantitative perspectives; • How they can be addressed in terms of prevention and management; • Innovations that may be piloted, evaluated, adopted, and diffused if appropriate. Public health agencies have a responsibility to prevent, prepare, and respond to incidents causing widespread population exposure to extreme events including disasters. Progress in disaster risk reduction (DRR) research has shown that it is often not the hazard that determines a disaster, but the vulnerability, exposure, and ability of the population to anticipate, respond to, and recover from its effects. When faced with an environmental health disaster, the following must be taken into account: - Preparedness is vital in addition to response; - The main aim must be prevention of disasters in the first place (i.e., DRR); - There are a range of available and innovative tools that can be used by the public health practitioners and researchers in this field; and - Effective prevention, preparedness, and response efforts require interdisciplinary collaborations, such as public health, healthcare, science, engineering, law, architecture, economy, journalism, sociology, psychology, and the arts.