The Kerala floods of 2018 offered a unique opportunity to appraise the challenges within the health sector and also redesign the health sector to be an anchor for communities in an event of any extreme climatic event in the future.
Healthy Energy Initiative India and Doctors for You, in collaboration with Climate Action Network South Asia and Community Environmental Monitoring, conducted a preliminary multi stakeholder survey of Health System response to Kerala Floods of August 2018 to consolidate the experiences of health care systems in the state.
The survey particularly assessed the event and its aftermath through the metrics of:
- Emergency Rescue – availability and access to materials, mobility and ease of access to facilities by staff and patients
- Governance and operations
- Structural and technical integrity of hospitals and health centres
- Access to reliable Energy, clean water, sewage and waste disposal
- Health work force management
- Preparedness for pestilence/vector and water borne diseases
- Preparedness for Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Building Climate Resilient Health Systems in Kerala:
A few important recommendations can be distilled from the survey finding which can be broadly divided into two categories:
a) Adapting to the challenges posed by extreme weather events.
b) Making health system resilient to withstand extreme weather events.
