New online courses to strengthen hospital disaster resilience

Curso Comando de incidentes para hospitales

Washington DC, 26 April 2021 (PAHO)-The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) launched, three open-access virtual courses that offer educational resources to strengthen hospital disaster resilience in the Region. The courses, offered in PAHO Virtual Campus for Public Health, are self-learning, people can take them at their own pace, without defined times, and autonomously. 

The educational initiative seeks to strengthen the resilience of health facilities to better prepare to face, assimilate and recover as quickly as possible from the impact of an adverse event. These capacities are directly related to their operational continuity and, for this reason, communities with resilient health facilities will have an opportunity to recover faster and better after an emergency or disaster.

The new courses available are the following:

Hospital Planning course for the response to health emergencies and disasters

The Hospital Planning course for the response to health emergencies and disasters is designed as part of the Multi-threat Response Framework and directed at the execution level (operational) to reinforce capacities in the face of health emergencies and disasters, through training and training of personnel in Health.

Hospital Incident Command System 

The Hospital Incident Command System (SCI-H) course aims to provide the necessary knowledge to health personnel at different levels and institutions for the implementation of emergency response plans and disasters at the hospital level are more efficient, under a single command structure and with better logistical and administrative support.

Evaluation of Hospital Preparedness Against Violence

The course Evaluation of Hospital Preparedness Against Violence (RAP, for its acronym in English), aims to train evaluators who apply the tool (RAP) to verify the hospital preparedness of the safety situation of health facilities that are in areas of violence and social insecurity and thus, take adequate mitigation and preparation actions to increase their capacity and security.