Current and Future Challenges in Public Health and Disaster Preparedness

Dear Colleagues,

In a globalized world where crisis incidents are becoming more frequent, more devastating, and have a significant impact on the health and lives of societies, the quality of healthcare services, including disaster preparedness in particular, is crucial for health security. The increased risk of a mass accident or catastrophe necessitates the organization of remedial measures intended to protect against these types of unusual events and to facilitate the preparation required to mitigate their impact. A well-established preparedness program is a prerequisite for the effective response of healthcare systems to emergencies.

Successfully managing disasters and public health crises depends on adequate measures implemented at all levels of the emergency chain of action, from policymakers to the general population. It starts with appropriate risk assessment, prevention, and mitigation and continues to prehospital and hospital care, recovery, and evaluation. All levels of action require well-thought-out emergency management plans and routines based on established command and control, identified safety issues, functional communication, well-documented triage and treatment policies, and available logistics. All these characteristics are capabilities that should be developed and trained, particularly when diverse agencies are involved.

The importance of this Issue is its commitment to all parts of disaster and public health preparedness from a multi-agency perspective.

The main goal of this Issue is to bring together public health perspectives on disaster preparedness and develop the idea of current and future challenges from a wider perspective.

Dr. Krzysztof Goniewicz
Guest Editor

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