PAHO sponsors disaster preparedness workshop

The second disaster preparedness workshop for this week began today at the WASA conference room. Joan Burke from HECOPAB told us more.

Joan Burke, Director, HECOPAB

“The main objective is to prepare participants, to give them information so that they can acquire these skills to develop a disaster management plan. The agenda for today basically looks at the overall management of any disaster which includes all the sectors involve. You know we have the National Emergency Management Organization, NEMO. Next month they will have a major exercise, “Millenium Breeze”. That will definitely take a lot of coordination and a lot of planning. In preparation for this meeting we decided to bring the permanent secretaries in here because most of them head main committees of NEMO. And so if we can establish that kind of understanding and relationship at this point then it would be better for us to effectively manage any major disaster.”

Burke says that the workshop is being facilitated by consultants from the Pan-American Health Organization’s regional office in Barbados. Government officials are also attending a preparedness workshop this week being facilitated by the government of Chile.