Earthquake Anniversary in Mexico Highlights Need for Safer Hospitals

More than 800 disaster and public health experts marked the 20th anniversary of Mexico City's devastating 1985 earthquake by calling for stepped-up action to ensure that hospitals and other health services remain functional following natural disasters.

The experts were gathered for "20 Years after the Earthquake: Safe Hospitals," a conference organized by Mexico's secretaries of health and the interior, the Social Security Institute, and leaders from other national institutions, with the support of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The meeting was part of a series of events commemorating the 8.1-magnitude earthquake in Mexico City that killed an estimated 10,000 people and destroyed large sections of the city.

Jean-Luc Poncelet, PAHO area manager for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief, told participants in the conference that the 1985 earthquake had taught a painful lesson about the importance of keeping health facilities operational in the aftermath of disasters. The earthquake damaged or destroyed a number of major hospitals, resulting not only in hundreds of patient deaths but also in the loss of some 5,000 hospital beds, leaving thousands of injured survivors without access to medical services.

In his presentation to the conference, Poncelet noted that in Latin America, natural disasters have caused more than $3 billion in direct damages to hospitals during the past 20 years. But the loss of health services has also meant that countless people have suffered greater illness, injury, and disability; more time off from work; and greater economic hardship following disasters.

The technology for building new disaster-safe hospitals and for retrofitting older ones is widely available and not costly, Poncelet emphasized. But making use of that technology requires greater political commitment on the part of governments. He said Mexico's Social Security Institute, which lost 90 percent of its hospital and clinic capacity in the 1985 earthquake, has made great progress in this area, certifying 19 of its 44 hospitals nationwide as "disaster prepared."

Poncelet added that the challenge of ensuring safe hospitals involves more than safe construction, since hospitals must not only remain structurally sound but also maintain basic services such as water, electricity, and communications in order to provide health care.

The Sept. 19–20 conference was a follow-up to the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held in Kobe, Japan, in January of this year. Participants in that conference proposed making safe hospitals a global indicator, akin to the Millennium Development Goals. They called on countries to make all new hospitals disaster-safe by the year 2015 and to retrofit existing health facilities to make them better withstand disasters.

Other organizers of the Mexico meeting included the Institute of Social Security and Services for Public Employees, the Mexican Academy of Surgeons, the National Academy for Civil Protection, the Pan American Association for Emergency and Disaster Medicine, the Institute for Civil Protection of Mexico, and the Mexican Association for Stress, Trauma and Disasters.

The PAHO publication Safe Hospitals: A Collective Responsibility is available online.

	The Pan American Health Organization Promoting Health in the Americas