Mangaluru: India’s Disaster Health for Deliberations in Delhi on Mar 21

- Media Release

Mangaluru, 10 March 2016: Center for Health and Development (CHD-India) and International Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR, New Delhi) in collaboration with Alliance for Adaption and Disaster Risk Reduction, New Delhi and Yenepoya University, Mangaluru as the Knowledge Partner will be organizing the stakeholders meeting on ‘Building India’s Disaster Health Infrastructure at IIHMR, New Delhi on March 21 from 9.30am to 2.30 pm. Yenepoya University has been rolling up initiatives to create resilient communities through multiple efforts.

 

Stakeholder’s participating in this meeting will be from Central Government Ministries, representatives from United Nation Organizations and Civil Society institutions across the National Capital Region. The core focus for discussion will be on the Urban Risk Mitigation and Urban Disease Dynamics.

 

The stakeholder meeting will also make a serious attempt to decode the global policy frameworks of the Paris Agreement, The Sustainable Development Goals laid down by the United Nations and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and convert these into grass-root level changes for the district and taluks.

 

Dr Edmond Fernandes, CEO, CHD-India will focus on ‘Disaster Health has been a missing link in all these global policy frameworks and we wish to mainstream health in humanitarian emergencies.Disaster Management Act 2005 was certainly a welcome move, but 2016 paints a different story to the trajectory of Asian nations and its implications for India is frightening. You don’t need statistics to gauge a gathering depression that keeps coming back in the form of floods year after year and earthquakes, cyclones, droughts and typhoons that creates a loss of more than 2 percent of GDP and disproportionately displace multitudes and add to socio-economic losses beyond repair.’ Transforming these theoretical visions into actions and mainstreaming health as a priority agenda is what the challenge calls for. Civil society and voices of front-liners can help streamline the change at the policy level.

 

Dr Manu Gupta, Chair - Asian Disaster Risk Reduction Network, Harjeet Singh, Chair - Alliance for Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction and International Climate Change Expert, Dr A. K Khokhar, Director, IIHMR, New Delhi, Homolata Borah, Social Science Researcher and Head, Humanities, CHD-India will be the main anchors for the stakeholder meeting.

 

This meeting will put together urban planners, medical anthropologists, social scientists, disaster researchers and public health leaders to bring out a recommendation report that will be submitted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Health and family Welfare and to Ministry of HRD for necessary implementations. Dr. Edmond Fernandes says, it will also highlight, ‘Health is often very low on Governance priorities and Disaster Health as an India story is yet to be written. Disaster health literacy is abysmally low among most Asian nations and disaster preparedness even worse. It is that time of the century when health in humanitarian emergencies deserves to be treated with utmost seriousness before we invite eternal damnation. The country should have the Disaster Management Act 2005 revised for the missing link it carries and a basic law for national resilience should be made an Act of Parliament.’

 

Contact:

Dr Edmond Fernandes

CEO, CHD-India

Email: edmondvirgo@gmail.com