The Role of Public Health Services in Disaster Prevention Available to Purchase

Public health authorities have a crucial role to play in disaster prevention. They must identify the source of danger and ensure that it is kept at a level of simple risk bringing into play every preventive measure to guarantee a minimum level of safety. Outlines the importance of impact studies – the potential catastrophic agent is identified and examined with an eye to its reliability and “intrinsic safety”. A second instrument available to public health authorities is vulnerability analysis, namely the relationship between the environment and the population. Stresses the role of education as a“social” intervention in encouraging knowledge and the adoption of a behaviour which will diminish the hazard factors and increase the protection factors.