Reducing the Risk of Environmental Disasters for a Healthy Pacific

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Reducing the Risk of Environmental Disasters for
a Healthy Pacific

• Mark Keim, MD
• Centers for Disease Control
• and Prevention

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Pacific islanders carry the highest environmental
disaster burden in the entire world

• Environmental emergencies are becoming more
  frequent among all developing nations of the
  world 1
• 1 Noji, The Public Health
  Consequences of Disasters

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First Pacific Health Summit for Sustainable
Disaster Risk Management

• Summit I 2004
• Attended by 16 Health Ministers of the Pacific
  basin
• Developed the worlds first coordinated regional
  strategy for management of public health
  emergencies over the next decade
• Invited to present in plenary session of the
  Second World Congress for Disaster Reduction in
  Kobe, Japan

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First Pacific Health Summit for Sustainable
Disaster Risk Management

• Produced a regional declaration for risk
  management that named 32 objectives related to
• Preparedness
• Mitigation
• Response
• Recovery

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First Pacific Health Summit for Sustainable
Disaster Risk Management

• CDC presented the Declaration of the 2004 Pacific
  Health Summit at the Second World Congress for
  Disaster Reduction in Hyogo, Japan in January
  2005

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2nd Pacific Health Summit for Sustainable
Disaster Risk Management

• Summit II 2005
• Attended by 19 Health Ministers and the world
  donor and NGO community
• Operationalized the objectives of Summit I into
  16 international project proposals

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2nd Pacific Health Summit for Sustainable
Disaster Management

• Sixteen project concept papers were published in
  the peer review literature

Pacific Health Dialog, Vol.3. No. 1, March 2006
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Reducing the Risk of Environmental Disasters
for a Healthy Pacific

• Attended by
• 50 select professionals
• 30 organizations
• 12 countries
• 6 Health Ministries/Depts.
• Objectives
• Investigate and report the disaster hazards and
  vulnerabilities currently facing Pacific
  islanders
• Identify and prioritize opportunities for
  disaster risk reduction in Pacific Island
  countries and territories

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Agenda
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Outcomes and outputs

• Participants will
• Identify and prioritize disaster hazards and
  vulnerabilities
• Develop a regional strategy to reduce the risk of
  adverse health outcomes due to disasters
• Develop project proposals for reducing the risk
  of health emergencies in the Pacific

• Proceedings of the meeting will be available for
• Scientific publication
• Governmental and non-governmental funding and
  policy considerations

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THANK YOU