Disaster is a calamity of sudden occurrence, a catastrophe causing injury and death to a large number of people during a short span of time.
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Disasters have resulted from one or more primary causes or hazards] such as an earthquake, heavy rainfall, hurricane, chemical accident, drought, or armed conflict.
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Some hazards e.g. earthquake and hurricane kill and injure many people at the time of impact. Often, however, the greatest toll on humankind is due to secondary effects such as flooding, fires, famine and multitude of refugees.
In general, the primary cases of disasters are not preventable. Their secondary effects however are amenable to prevention, or at least mitigation.
WHO defines a disaster as any occurrence that causes damage, economic disruption, loss of human life and deterioration of health and health services on a scale sufficient to warrant an extraordinary response from outside the effected community or area?
The needs of disaster affected community depend largely on the following factors:
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1. The type of disaster
2. The resources of the community
3. Its degree of preparedness, and
4. The stage in the disaster’s evolution.
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The health care system including hospitals and public health infrastructure of the area must be organised and ready to act in mass emergency situations. And therefore, it must be conversant with the type of measures to be taken in the event of a disaster.
District Medical and Health authorities are the key institutions in planning and management of health services on area-wide basis for disasters. Hospitals and health centres participate in the local medical effort.