An Evaluation of Non-Structural Vulnerabilities of Hospitals Involved in the 2012 East Azerbaijan Earthquake

Abstract

Background: When disasters strike, hospitals are among the first units whose efficient and timely services can be crucial and decisive in reducing mortality and rescuing the injured. Non-structural components are among domains that need to be considered in any assessment of hospitals' readiness tools. Objectives: Given that Azerbaijan, and especially the metropolis of Tabriz, is located in the world's earthquake belt, this study aimed to evaluate the non-structural vulnerability of hospitals involved in the 2012 Azerbaijan earthquake. Materials and Methods: In a cross-sectional study, eight public, social security, military, and private earthquake-stricken hospitals in Azerbaijan were assessed from nine different aspects using the standard checklist issued by the WHO/HSI (hospital safety index). Results: The lowest level of performance was observed in communication and electrical systems. The hospitals surveyed had appropriate levels of performance in terms of water supply systems, medical gas systems, and emergency fuel. Although in the overall assessment, approximately 60% of hospitals surveyed had an acceptable performance in their non-structural elements, key sectors such as emergency, ICU, radiology, and laboratories had rather low to moderate levels of safety in all hospitals. Conclusions: In total, two hospitals had high levels of readiness in the assessment (above 80%). Given that Iran, and particularly its neighbor Azerbaijan, is a crisis-prone country, using non-structural security protocols of the WHO has had a significant effect on the non-structural readiness and safety of hospitals.

Development of a Hospital Medical Surge Preparedness Index using a national hospital survey

“…From these scores, the authors defined thousands of hospitals reflecting their likelihood to retain functionality during disasters. The WHO Hospital Safety Index has been used extensively across several continents (Heidaranlu et al 2017;Rockenschaub and Harbou 2013;Norman et al 2012;Djalali et al 2014). However, it is limited in that it is not focused on evaluating hospital surge preparedness and it contains items that are not applicable to every hospital.…”

“…This concept is well described in the Institute of Medicine work titled Crisis Standards of Care: A Systems Framework for Catastrophic Disaster Response (2012). As noted by Heidaranlu et al (2017), achievement of optimal hospital disaster response depends on effective management of these events. The challenge to hospitals can be daunting.…”

An Assessment of Saudi Hospitals’ Disaster Preparedness

“…The study has obtained data by utilizing a cross-sectional self-administered questionnaire that was constructed based on the literature review and pilot study. Moreover, the assessment tool has been structured based on literature review, which has revealed that there are many HDP tools and checklists with different scopes and magnitudes, but all of these studies have agreed on the fact that there is no consensus exists on standardized, comprehensive, and validated instrument to assess HDP for all hazards (Heidaranlu, Ebadi, et al, 2017;Heidaranlu et al, 2015;Jenkins et al, 2009;Kaji et al, 2008;Nekoie-Moghadam et al, 2016). Therefore, this study has utilized Hospital Safety Index (HIS) assessment criteria, which was develop by World Health Organization (WHO) in order to define the level of preparedness for each indicator.…”

Field Hospital in Disasters: A Systematic Review

“…When natural disasters, such as flood, earthquake or man-made disasters (terrorist and war attack) occur, the importance of medical facilities is the most considerable (1). As data from the emergency events database (EM-DAT) of the centre for research on the epidemiology of disasters show, the global disaster rate is increasing (2).…”

“…If a disaster strikes a country, all political, economic and cultural infrastructures are threatened. However, all equipment and facilities must be mobilized to respond to the crisis (1). Furthermore, FHs are health care units with mobile or fix structures.…”