India
faces manpower crunch in post-disaster situations
Thursday April 07, 2011 06:32:05 PM,
IANS
|
New Delhi: India is
least prepared to deal with psycho-social and mental health problems
that arise in the aftermath of a natural disaster because of
manpower shortage, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA)
officials said here Thursday.
"India faces a shortage of manpower in dealing with psycho-social
problems that arise after disasters," NDMA vice-chairman Shashidhar
Reddy said at the national workshop on psycho-social support and
mental health services during disasters.
Noting that there is a "disconnect" between planning and
implementation of the policies related to disaster management in the
country, Reddy said: "It has something to do with the mindsets. We
need to evolve a system to deal with it."
The NDMA issued guidelines on Psycho-Social Support on Mental Health
Services in Disasters (PSSMHS) in December 2009 which set a timeline
of eight years to make India self-reliant in meeting all
post-disaster psychological needs of the victims.
"However, nothing much could be done in the past one year, "Reddy
added.
"There has been a complete lack of established institutional
mechanism for planning and implementation of PSSMHS activities,"
NDMA Secretary Noor Mohammad said.
"The potential of the district mental health programme for providing
PSSMHS needs to be reviewed carefully and an integration of district
mental health programmes with primary health centres needs to be
attempted," he added.
For every one lakh people in the world, there are 1.2 psychiatrists.
However, for India the figure is 0.2. The average number of social
workers globally is 0.4 and in India it is 0.03 per one lakh people.
Experts called for developing a multi-layered approach as people are
affected in different ways and require different kind of supports.
"Japan has shown the need for an effective programme. There is a
need to plan and adopt an integrated and intersectoral approach to
address immediate and long term needs in this field," Noor Mohammad
said.
"It should be developed as it is the best form of disaster
preparedness," he added.
The workshop was organised to assess the level of implementation of
the different aspects of guidelines.
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