Resilient hospital Sultanah Aminah, Malaysia
Resilient Health Infrastructure (RHI) is part of MERCY Malaysia’s Building Resilient Communities (BRC) initiative. It is a program focusing on advocating a planned preparation in strengthening hospitals’ and the other capacity of health infrastructure in order to respond effectively during disasters as well as fast recovery from the impact of extreme events. Considering health infrastructure such as hospitals as complex and sophisticated organizations, hospital services and management, and its built environment representing building and infrastructure systems within a defined boundary should perform in a predictable manner during and after a hazard event and/or disaster.
Most hospitals in Malaysia were planned, designed and built without taking into account the probability of disaster. The failure of hospitals to absorb and accommodate pressures during disasters will cause performance degradation of services and health care of the hospital. Phenomenon like this had led the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) to promote ‘Hospital Safe from Disaster Campaign’ (2008-2009), aiming to make hospitals more resilient and more prepared during disasters.
This RHI initiative is a two-fold activity-based project:
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a) Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) sensitization and trainings through the Building Resilient Communities (BRC) modules for Resilient Health Infrastructure (RHI) through engagement, training and advocating hospital users’ (doctors, administrators and other users) in disaster risk reduction and disaster risk management;
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b) Implementation of the RHI Action Plan to reduce vulnerabilities of critical assets, systems, and networks; and mitigate the potential consequences to critical infrastructure of disaster incidents. This includes implementing intervention projects needed in increasing the hospital’s resiliency. The action plan is a result from Item A, which the hospital’s stakeholders will identify, justifies and plans themselves from the engagement and training process.
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