Health System Preparedness for Coincidence of Natural Disasters and COVID-19: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Background: In December 2019, the Chinese city of Wuhan has reported a novel pneumonia caused by COVID-19. While the COVID-19 pandemic has been increasingly affecting the world, the occurrence of natural disasters resulted in complex emergencies. The present review is aimed to identify the research focused on coincidence of natural disasters and COVID-19 and describe the preparedness and response actions applied by affected countries. Methods: This study was conducted and reported based on PRISMA checklist. The databases of Web of Sciences, PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and World Health Organization Library were searched. The inclusion criteria were all forms of published articles which investigated the dual risk or coincidence of natural disasters and COVID-19 pandemic. Once the studies selection was completed and the relevant papers was finalized, the analysis was done.Findings: Out of 1245 studies generated by initial search, a number of 13 articles was selected for final analysis. Earthquake was the most frequent disaster which its coincidence with COVID-19 was studied by researchers (31%). The implications of researchers for healthcare system were explained in three sections of climatic events, earthquakes and all hazard approach in relation to COVID-19.Conclusion: Extracting the lessons learned from the regions affected by disasters at the time of COVID-19 pandemic can be helpful for healthcare professionals and policy-makers to modify their preparedness and response plans for cascading risk of natural disasters and a serious pandemic such as COVID-19. Further research is needed to identify the factors strengthen the preparedness of health system for the dual risk of natural hazards and pandemics.

Assessment of Intraorganizational Collaboration in the health sector during Disasters

“…[ 8 11 ] The variety of different units and departments in the health sector, including the providers of prehospital services, public health services, curative, and rehabilitation services, as well as information management centers, safety and security centers, and planning and policy-making centers has made collaboration more difficult especially in disasters. [ 7 9 12 13 14 15 16 ] Lack of collaboration as an important challenge in the health sector has resulted in the disruption of tasks and parallel work and has prevented the procurement of suitable services in disasters. [ 8 9 14 15 17 18 19 20 ] Given that the issue has been rarely studied[ 8 15 17 18 19 21 22 23 ] and the focus of studies is more on the collaboration between different responsible organizations, evaluating the collaboration function can help the health sector by identifying and eliminating obstacles and problems of partnerships and improve future collaborations in disasters.…”