Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) Tuesday voiced serious concern over lack of preparedness of Kashmir hospitals to tackle disasters like earthquake.
President DAK Dr Nisar ul Hassan in a statement while expressing grief over loss of lives in yesterday’s earthquake said that hospitals in Kashmir are not prepared to deal with calamities.
“Valley hospitals lack treatment and surgical capacity to deal with mass casualties during earthquake,” he said adding “they lack resources like infrastructure, staff, space and supplies to manage sudden influx of an unexpected patient load during disaster.”
Dr Nisar said that there are no designated disaster wards, no disaster stores and no concept of reserved staff in case of large scale disasters.
“Hospital disaster management committees which are essential for making a disaster plan for the hospital are visibly absent,” he said adding “there is neither disaster management training to hospital staff nor any periodic drill to test the response capabilities to disasters.”
Dr Nisar said that as of now disaster preparedness in healthcare of Kashmir is an orphan entity.
