Narrow Results

Healthcare is usually the first that comes to our minds when dealing with the consequence of major hazards to deal with the large numbers of casualties; however, this was not available due to the ineffective preparedness. Literature illustrates a significant number of publications covering the resilience of healthcare to major hazards; however these tend to be fragmented due to the complexity of this service which often gives an incomplete picture of the health service and thus leads to inadequate level of preparedness. This chapter addresses some of this fragmentation by shedding light on disaster-resilience in the healthcare sector with the view to enhance the understanding of this service and thus builds its capacity and ultimately mitigates disaster risks. The chapter covers the performance of healthcare post disasters; hospitals’ structural, non-structural and functional integrity; regulations and safety codes; and the integration of resilience and the sustainability agendas through an illustration of international case studies. This chapter also presents new dimensions for enhancing disaster-resilience in a healthcare setting. These dimensions are based on a new concept known as sustainable healthcare.