OBJECTIVES When a soccer stadium stampede occurred in Zimbabwe on 9 July 2000, the hospital disaster (medical emergency) plan failed. This report describes the use of the audit technique to change the hospital's disaster preparedness. METHOD A literature review was done to establish international standards of best practice in major medical incident response. The hospital disaster plan (major ...

With increasing dependence on information technology, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) need Disaster Recovery Planning to protect their information systems environment. This paper investigates the impact of Business Impact Analysis and testing on successful implementation of Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) by HMOs. A survey reveals that HMOs that conduct Business Impact Analysis are more ...

Post disaster reconstruction in the destructed zones entails the social aspects in addition to the physical and urban aspects, because of the presence of affected people in the very location. The presented research aims to assess the social aspects of the post disaster conditions in the course of reconstruction, which take into consideration the related social factors in the affected community....

Disaster has serious impact to our society in many aspects. In the last decade more than 500.000 people were the victim of various natural disasters all over the world. Economic damage in terms of absolute amount and percentage to GDP was also very high. The risk of some types of natural disasters, such as flood and landslide, can actually be reduced provided appropriate policies and infrastruc...

The world's largest crystal ball is in Washington D.C. It weighs 48.5kg (106.8lb). Yet even this massive sphere cannot predict our future.1 We hope to be happy but, as recent events remind us, we should prepare for the worst. extent of that preparation, nationally and personally, subject much current discussion with considerable application power hindsight. Pandemics are uncommon but other majo...