Health Sector Self-Assessment Tool for Disaster Risk Reduction

Abstract

The Health Sector Self-Assessment Tool for Disaster Risk Reduction (the Tool) aims to help health sector managers and health disaster coordinators (HDC) determine the status of key aspects of disaster risk management (DRM) in their country (notably mitigation and preparedness). Its purpose is to assist health disaster coordinators arrive at a comprehensive assessment of disaster mitigation and preparedness of the health sector. Once completed and adjusted to national particularities, it could provide a baseline against which to monitor progress in the implementation of a disaster risk reduction or disaster risk management program, if conducted as part of an annual review process. The Tool has been developed upon the fundamental premise that countries’ limited resources to deliver their national health programmes (or set of initiatives) could be degraded because of disasters, at a time when demand for them is at a peak...Another key premise is that in matters of disaster risk management, the health sector does not operate in a vacuum but rather as part of the national disaster risk management system. The health sector both contributes to and is dependent upon the national system.