Emerging preparedness for major accidents: updates about the 9/11 health consequences and more recent events.
Year: 2022
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: BACKGROUND AND AIM: Response to disasters and the investigation of their immediate and long-term impact on health population health differ by the social, economic, and political contexts. We analyze three different events and extract key lessons for emergency preparedness and disaster management. METHOD: This presentation reviews the response to the 9/11 disaster in 2001 and provides updates from the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP). It also analyzes two events occurred in: i) Miami Beach, Florida, where the Champlain Tower residential building collapsed on June 24, 2021; ii) Durban, South Africa, where a fire caused by protest-related arson caused a large chemical warehouse to burn down on July 12, 2021. RESULTS: The WTCHP is revealing emerging impacts on cognitive decline among the responders, signaling the need for long term follow up. Across the three disasters, prevention, response and environmental monitoring was suboptimal. No action has been taken to investigate and control the physical and mental health consequences among responders and impacted community in the aftermath of the chemical fire in Durban, where access to critical exposure information needed to identify risk has been denied. In Florida, there was also some suboptimal preparedness in terms of recognizing the immediate threat posed by exposure to airborne pollutants. The scientific and health communities may be still missing important exposure-outcome relationships needed to address these recent disasters. CONCLUSIONS: The observation of the health consequences from the WTCHP strengthen the need of long-term health surveillance in populations impacted by disasters. It also reinforces the need of adequate emergency preparedness, which is still largely insufficient, if not ignored, as shown by the cases of most recent disasters.
Source: ISEE Conference Abstracts
Authors: Roberto Lucchini, Leslie London, Rajen Naidoo
Language: English
Subfield: Emergency Medical Services
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4316924730