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PESHAWAR, Sep 03 (APP): Sakina Bibi of Center for Disaster Preparedness and Management University of Peshawar has conducted a research study to assess hospital resilience for future pandemics, identify strengths and weaknesses in the city’s healthcare and form strategies for mitigating the impact of future pandemics.
The research comprehensively evaluates medical teaching hospitals’ resilience to tackle future pandemics, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The study key findings reveal that hospitals in the study area faced significant challenges in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite some progress hospitals will remain unprepared to accommodate a high number of patients in the event of future pandemics due to a lack of resources, limited or unavailable personal protective equipment (PPE), inadequate budgets, dedicated wards, and laboratories, inflexible infrastructure and insufficiently trained staff.
Data shows that weak governance, financial instability, lack of public awareness and unemployment contribute to the spread of infectious diseases. The study highlights the importance of resilience capacities, such as disease surveillance and early warning systems, emergency risk management programs with emergency response plans, efficient administration, strong healthcare system governance and community engagement to make hospitals resilient to future pandemics in the study area.
Based on the findings, structural and non-structural measures, including upgrading infrastructure, increasing ICU bed capacity, providing psychological support, and training healthcare providers are proposed to enhance coping capacities of hospitals in the study area. The study offers a roadmap to enhance medical teaching institutions’ resilience against future pandemics, ensuring a more effective.
Sakina Bibi successfully defended her thesis to Defence Committee comprising Prof. Dr. Zulfiqar Ali, Director CDPM as Convener, Dr. Asad Ullah, Associate Professor as External Examiner and Dr. Mushtaq as Internal examiner.