Crisis leader needed to deal with disasters in western Pacific – WHO

Western Pacific countries need to appoint a crisis commander to effectively deal with natural calamities and man-made disasters in the region, the chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) said in Manila on Wednesday. "There must be only one entity that coordinates everybody," said Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director general. The health chief is attending the 62nd Session of the 37-member WHO Regional Committee for the Western Pacific, which started on Monday and ends Friday. She told the meeting of senior health experts and officials that the western Pacific Region, which has suffered from a spate of floods and earthquakes in recent months, has to learn from the lessons of relief aid in Africa and Haiti. Inadequate disaster preparedness due to the absence of a single coordinating authority meant that planeloads of relief goods were flown to disaster-stricken areas from different countries, but "I don't mind to tell you, they were the wrong kind of supplies," Chan said. The international community's generosity was "wasted" in the case of Africa and Haiti, Chan said. "So who is going to coordinate in order to get the right kind of commodities and not clog the runway? These are among the challenges we have not addressed." Several countries in Southeast Asia including the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia are currently reeling from unprecedented floods that have inundated heavily populated urban areas. This year, Japan and New Zealand suffered huge earthquakes that caused massive damage. Chan said each country and territory in the region must clearly map out a crisis command control mechanism with clearly defined roles and functions. "The search capacity in each country as well as that of the WHO and other communities must be looked at," the WHO chief said. “When you send rescue teams to other countries, you may be sending the wrong kind of help. Who is going to make the needs assessment and share them with the international community? "Response to floods is different from burn response and earthquake response," she noted. Better coordination is needed as the trends in the last four years indicate that disasters and calamities are occurring with "higher frequency and in bigger magnitude," Chan said. "In 2010, the multiple number of crisis and disasters exposed the vulnerability of countries and territories and also of the international community, especially the humanitarian sector, to jointly respond to these natural disasters and crisis," she said. Chan succeeded Gro Harlem Brundtland in November 2006 as chief of the WHO, and her tenure ends in June 2012. During her term, Chan said she has initiated a re-structuring of the United Nations’ chief health agency to improve its response time and relief efforts during humanitarian crises. “The decentralized structure of the WHO is our asset because the WHO responds faster," she said. "We have heard from some countries asking, why do you need a command control mechanism?" she said. “One thing I learned from my predecessor: It is an unenviable task to be coordinator because nobody likes to be coordinated. Everybody wants to be the boss." Chan said differing views among government agencies has hampered relief efforts in the region. "The ministers of health see preparedness as an important element, and yet, the ministers of development do not agree with preparedness being an important element that should be supported by a mechanism," she observed. She called on the entire WHO bureaucracy in different parts of the globe for a closer "cross-regional response" in times of disasters and calamities. "This is the way we provide surge response capacity within the WHO. Within one country, in times of crisis, the minister of health alone cannot respond; you need to bring the entire, total asset of a country to respond to a crisis," she concluded. – YA, GMA News