Emergency and disaster preparedness for chronically ill patients: a review of recommendations

Emergency and disaster preparedness for chronically ill patients: a review of recommendations

Blog Article

Jun Tomio,1 Hajime Sato2 1Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; 2Department of Health Policy and Technology Assessment, National Institute of Public Health, Wako, Japan Abstract: Recent disasters, especially those in developed countries, have highlighted hbl5266ca the importance of disaster preparedness measures for chronic diseases.A number of surviving patients experienced the exacerbation of a chronic illness, such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and chronic respiratory diseases, due to disaster-related stress, interruption of care, or both; for some patients, these exacerbations resulted in death.Here, we review reports from recent disasters in developed countries and summarize the recommendations for disaster preparedness of here chronically ill patients.A considerable number of recommendations based on the lessons learned from recent disasters have been developed, and they provide practical and essential steps to prevent treatment interruption during and after a disaster.To improve preparedness efforts, we suggest that health care providers should be aware of the following three suggestions: 1) recommendations should be evidence-based; 2) recommendations should contain consistent messages; and 3) recommendations should be feasible.

Keywords: disaster, chronic illness, preparedness.