The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), the UN panel in
its third and final report on assessment
on climate change warned that future
climate change is expected to put close
to 50 million people at risk of hunger
by 2020, temperatures could rise up to
five degrees Celsius by 2080 unless
emissions are decisively reduced.
Himalayan glaciers are receding faster
than in any other part of the world and
at current rates of global warming,
could disappear by 2035. Coastal
populations in Asia are also vulnerable
to sea level rise, which is slightly
higher than the global average.
Projected sea level rise could flood
millions of people living in the low
lying areas of South, Southeast and East
Asia such as Viet Nam, Bangladesh, India
and China. Also, extreme weather
patterns are already taking their toll
on crop yields. Challenges in tackling
global warming concerns is mounting
pressures on the developing countries.
With the
heavy rains resulting in
flooding, landslides along Sri Lanka's
coastal belt in early May,
flash floods in northern Thailand are
all evident climate turbulence in the
region.
On 30 April, ADPC handed
over the Tourism Risk Management
strategy plan to the Phuket Governor,
Nirund Galayanamit. The plan comprised
of a complete file of comprehensive
evacuation preparedness plans and maps
drawn up with several local communities
including villages, schools, and
hospitals, over the past 2 years. The
plan also discussed measures to reduce
disaster risks in tourism in the
future.
I am further pleased to
present new publications from ADPC’s
Coastal Risk Analysis of Tsunamis and
Environmental Remediation (CRATER)
project, “Manual of Risk Assessment and
Evaluation (ArcGIS program)”,
“Manual of Evacuation
routes tools ArcGIS® toolbox” and
“Reducing Tsunami risk strategies for
urban planning and guidelines for
construction design”. The publications
will be available online at our website
www.adpc.net.
I now appraise you to our
activities for the month of May 2007.
Dr. Bhichit Rattakul
Executive Director a.i.
Asian Disaster Preparedness Center
...............................................
Announcements
Public
Health and Emergency Management in Asia
and the Pacific
(PHEMAP- 7) 18-29 June 2007
Bangkok, Thailand
INTRODUCTION
ADPC, WHO-WPRO,
and WHO-SEARO jointly developed the
PHEMAP curriculum in 2001 and
implemented the first PHEMAP
inter-regional course in March 2002 in
collaboration with WHO and with support
from the Japan International Corporation
for Welfare Services (JICWELS).
Subsequently, ADPC has been implementing
the inter-regional PHEMAP courses with
funding support from WHO and the Royal
Government of Norway.
The 7th
Inter-regional PHEMAP course is
organized by ADPC and WHO (SEARO/WPRO),
with the funding support from the Royal
Government of Norway will be conducted
in Bangkok from 18-29 June 2007.
National
PHEMAP courses have been implemented in
Cambodia, People’s Republic of China,
Fiji, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Sri
Lanka and Viet Nam by the Ministries of
Health with support from WHO and other
agencies. Other activities, such as the
Management of the Dead and the Missing
in Disasters, have also been organized
by ADPC, SEARO, and WPRO. Briefly, the
PHEMAP Program’s goal is to strengthen
national capacities for managing health
risks of emergencies in the WHO Asia and
Western Pacific regions.
The
PHEMAP program objectives are:
To
enhance the knowledge, skills and
attitudes of health human resources
at national, sub-national and
community levels by offering a range
of training courses and capacity
building activities.
To
promote and facilitate regional
collaboration and national
coordination in health emergency
management through the development
and implementation of formal and
informal networks and other
activities.
To
contribute to capacity building in
other regions and countries by
offering PHEMAP initiatives.
The course
will give greater emphasis to the risk
management, program management,
operations management and leadership
roles of health emergency managers. The
course will enable graduates to address
the challenges of managing emergency
health risks by making improvements to
the capacity of their respective health
emergency management systems and
institutions.
Moreover,
PHEMAP course is specifically designed
for people who play critical health
emergency management and coordination
roles in managing the health risks of
emergencies. The inter-regional PHEMAP
course will familiarize health emergency
managers with policy-making, risk
management, emergency response and
recovery planning, international
standards and regional cooperation. They
will be able to adopt roles as a program
manager and operations coordinator by
applying tools and processes, such as
capacity assessment and development,
information management, incident
management, and risk communications to
improve emergency health services that
include environment health, mass
casualty management, feeding and
nutrition, emergency medical systems,
psychosocial support and communicable
disease control.
Public
Health in Complex Emergencies (PHCE-6)
13-25 August 2007
Bangkok, Thailand
Hospital Emergency
Preparedness and Response Course
(HEPR-5)
3-7 September 2007
Bangkok, Thailand
To be part of ADPC’s Information Resources
Network and to avail information, updates from
ADPC, please send in your request for a free
subscription to
adpcannounce@adpc.net
or
roopa@adpc.net.
Also, you are requested to inform us, if there
is any change in contact details.
