Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the primary healthcare center (PHC) as a whole-of-society approach to health that aims at ensuring the highest possible level of health and well-being and their equitable distribution by focusing on people’s needs as early as possible along the continuum from health promotion and disease prevention to treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care, and as close as feasibly possible to people’s everyday environment. PHCs are expected to remain operational when disasters occur. This study aimed to assess the PHC disaster preparedness level in Indonesia using The Hospital Safety Index (HSI) from WHO/PAHO. Eleven PHCs located in four provinces in Indonesia, i.e., Jakarta, Yogyakarta, North Sumatera, and West Java, were selected. Data were collected through interviews, focus-group discussions (FGDs), observations, and document reviews. The parameters assessed were all types of hazards, structural or construction safety, nonstructural safety, and functional attributes. The results show that the overall score of HSI for PHCs in Jakarta (0.674) and North Sumatera (0.752) fell into the “A” category, meaning that these PHCs would likely remain operational in the case of disasters. Meanwhile, the overall HSI scores for PHCs in West Java (0.601) and Yogyakarta (0.602) were between 0.36 and 0.65, or in “B” category, meaning that these PHCs would be able to recover during disasters but several services would be exposed to danger. The results suggested that there are several gaps that need urgent interventions to be applied for the structural safety of buildings, water supply systems, fuel storage, disaster committee organization, furniture and fittings, offices and storage equipment, as well as increasing the capacity of workers through a structured and systematic training framework for disaster readiness. The results from this study can be used for prioritizing budgets and resource allocation, cost planning, providing specific solutions for local and national government, and efforts to achieve disaster risk reduction.
Highlights
Protecting the lives of people affected by a disaster or emergency immediately after the event strikes is essential; this involves health services, including those provided by primary healthcare centers (PHCs)
Module 1 on Hospital Safety Index (HSI) is an initial identification of potential hazards and disaster risks within the area around the PHCs that involves identifying potential hazards caused by geological phenomena, hydro-meteorological phenomena, social phenomena, environmental health phenomena, chemical and/or technological phenomena, and considerations on geotechnical properties of soil
It is critical that PHCs remain operational after major emergencies and disasters
Summary
Protecting the lives of people affected by a disaster or emergency immediately after the event strikes is essential; this involves health services, including those provided by primary healthcare centers (PHCs). PHC is a healthcare service facility that organizes the public health approach and first-level individual health efforts by prioritizing promotive and preventive actions in its working area [1]. It must be accessible and well-functioning in this situation as it might become the determining factor of survival because the health system plays a major role in the mitigation and responses to disasters and emergencies, including during the currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic [2,3,4]. Scholars focusing on public health preparedness from around the world have been concerned about the state of PHC disaster readiness for more than three decades [5,6].
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