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Evacuation and Sheltering of Hospitals in Emergencies: A Review of International Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Jayshree Bagaria ,
Caroline Heggie ,
Jonathan Abrahams  and
Virginia Murray
Jayshree Bagaria
Affiliation:
Specialist Registrar Public Health, Oxford Post Graduate Medical Deanery, seconded to Chemical Hazards and Poisons Division, Health Protection Agency, London
Caroline Heggie
Affiliation:
Emergency Medicine Trainee on second-ment to Chemical Hazards and Poisons Division, Health Protection Agency, London
Jonathan Abrahams
Affiliation:
Coordinator, Risk Reduction & Emergency Preparedness EPC/HAC WHO, Geneva
Virginia Murray*
Affiliation:
Consultant Medical Toxicologist, Chemical Hazards and Poisons Division, Health Protection Agency, London, UK
*
Consultant Medical Toxicologist, Chemical Hazards and Poisons Division, Health Protection Agency, 7th floor Holborn Gate, 330 High Holborn, London WC1V 7PP, UK E-mail: Virginia.Murray@hpa.org.uk
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Abstract

Objective:

A scoping exercise to establish how common hospital evacuations are, identify hospital evacuation policies and review case studies to identify trig-gers, processes and challenges involved in the evacuation of hospitals globally.

Design:

A systematic search of PubMed and disaster agency online resources, search of grey literature and media reports.

Results:

This study showed that hospitals are vulnerable to both natural and man made disasters and that hospital evacuations do occur globally. It highlighted the paucity of published data and policy on hospital evacuation and emphasised the vital need to collect data on triggers, reasons for evacuation, sheltering facilities and the process of evacuation.

Conclusions:

This study recommends the collection of case studies and the development of a database to assist with the research and development of well tailored hospital evacuation plans. These recommendations reflect and support the 2008-2009 World Disaster Reduction Campaign on Hospitals Safe from Disasters and the timely 2009 Global Platform priority that, ‘Critical services and infrastructure such as health facilities and schools must be safe from disasters.

Keywords

chemical spilldisasterevacuationfirefloodhospitalinternational
Type
Special Report
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 24 , Issue 5 , October 2009 , pp. 461 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2009

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