The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Comprehensive emergency management plan coming

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 07, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Comprehensive emergency management plan coming

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, OCT. 6. At the end of a two-day course on National Disaster Preparedness in the city, participants have come up with a statewide management plan and a national plan for the health sector, outlining standard procedures and protocols.

The plans will be submitted to the State and Central Governments after fine-tuning, Radha Rajagopalan, Director of Medical Education, Apollo Hospitals, told presspersons after the course here yesterday.

Dr. Rajagopalan said all stakeholders, including government agencies and hospitals, would be involved in a dialogue which will produce a comprehensive management plan for Chennai.

The course was organised jointly by Apollo Hospitals, the Academy of Traumatology (India) and the British High Commission.

Colonel T.J. Hodgetts, defense consultant advisor in Emergency Medicine, U.K., who has worked on training Indian medics and paramedics on internationally-accepted doctrines for disaster management, said they had shown great commitment towards improving existing systems and cascading the knowledge and learning down the line.

Some Indian military personnel had also taken the course and efforts were on to liaison with senior army staff to introduce the systems in military settings as well.

While the courses taught generic principles that could apply to any disaster situation — natural calamities, epidemics, terrorist attack s — modifications could be made to suit requirements and situations.

``It is basically about the ability to organise limited resources to best advantage. In cases where medical capability is unpredictably degraded, it will be possible to follow the same themes, but the effectiveness of the outcome will rest more heavily on the resourcefulness and ability to improvise of those called to respond,'' he said.

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