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Proactive strategies for the health-care response to natural disasters

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Historically, the health-care response to natural disasters has been reactive, with responders rushing to the scene using deployable assets to treat those affected. The global community must increase efforts to complement this approach with proactive preparedness and readiness strategies designed to enhance disaster health-care capacity at a local level.

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Fig. 1: Effect of readiness on resource needs and response time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM), Madison, WI, USA

    Gregory Ciottone

  2. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Gregory Ciottone

  3. Division of Disaster Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Gregory Ciottone

  4. World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

    Flavio Salio

Authors
  1. Gregory Ciottone
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  2. Flavio Salio
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Correspondence to Gregory Ciottone.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Ciottone, G., Salio, F. Proactive strategies for the health-care response to natural disasters. Nat Rev Dis Primers 9, 53 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-023-00466-x

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