Capella University: Online Essay Answers

Capella University: Online Essay Answers

Global Events, Earthquakes in Haiti

Earthquakes in Haiti

Earthquakes are one of the worldwide natural disasters experienced in various parts of the world. One of the instances is the earthquake in Haiti that took place in 2010 in Port-au-Prince at the island of Hispaniola (Wex, Schryen, Feuerriegel, & Neumann, 2014). After the tragedy, various bodies including health groups, altruistic organizations and other countries responded to assist the Haitian government in rescuing the victims. The first international rescue team to arrive in the region was Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue (ICE-SAR) from Iceland. United States Coast Guard also took part in identifying the most affected areas and determine the magnitude of the aftershocks (Kato & Lee, 2015). This took an hour after the occurrence of the earthquake to compile the details of the earthquake.

In addition, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Red Cross intervened to provide food and water assistance. The Haitian Emergency Medical technicians and Catholic Relief Services also participated by providing ambulance services and medical rescue to the victims. Lastly, the Haitian armed forces rescued many people who were buried in rubble and provided first aid care appropriately. The rescue and evacuation operations occurred for at least 4 weeks.

            World Health Organization facilitated and coordinated disaster management activities. There were some programs which were conducted by WHO to enhance the preparedness of disaster management. WHO supported the country in building their capacity for managing the disaster. Building such capacity involved many programs such as developing the resilience of hospitals to be able to handle emergency cases at ease (Kato & Lee, 2015). World health Organization together with other bodies such as Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) assessed the hospitals and provided recommendations that were meant to offer more resilience tools to handle intricate complications brought about by the earthquake.

How Issues of Race, Class, And Gender May Have Affected the Response

In every society, there are variations based on gender, social attitudes, political stability, race, class, and gender that affect the responses to natural disasters. First, a country that is economically stable is less prone to some disasters like earthquake and flood because they can afford to employ advance technology to identify and identify natural disasters prior their happening (Wex et al., 2014). For instance, Haiti lacked relevant equipment to rescue the victims hence increasing the death rates. Secondly, lack of sufficient health care services and personnel contributed to poor health care service and management of the survivors.

Social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are also an imperative aspect of seeking assistance in case of occurrence of a natural disaster in a country. They were used to spread messages and pleas by tagging major rescue organizations such as red cross. Developing countries such as Haiti are prone to severity of disasters because people live in crowded social places mostly with poor facilities and essentially without any set mechanism to address emergencies. The lower class individuals may also lack health insurance cover, which they can use to access quality care after a disaster.

Race and gender may also contribute to disparities during the response. However, this was not the case in Haiti. Despite the gender and race of the Haitian people affected, a number of nations offered contingents of medical staff, disaster relief, and technicians to help in the rescue and evacuation of the victims. In addition, some states agreed to send humanitarian supplies, monetary support, relief and rescue workers to nonprofit groups working in earthquake damage zones. Gender can affect the response in that the genders create varying degrees of urgency in the time of a disaster (Kato & Lee, 2015). For example, a woman who is expectant is likely to receive a more specialized care. Other than that, there are also many biological settings that create different needs between the genders. Race issues can only be applied with a certain degree of fairness since all races have right to reasonable and quality health care and they are entitled to equal treatment despite their ethnicity.

Role of International and Altruistic Organizations in Providing Health Care

Many local and international organizations were involved in providing rescue and evacuation assistance. Such groups include Red Cross, U.N, World health Organization, United States Coast Guard, and ICE-SAR that played major roles in the rescue operations (Miranda, 2014). The role of Red Cross and other altruistic bodies served various purposes.  First, they gave immediate service of rescuing survivors after a disaster. The ICE-SAR and Haitian Army were involved in looking for survivors under the collapsed buildings. They brought their own equipment for first aid and vehicles such as ambulances for transporting the injured people to the nearest hospitals for treatment. Some of these organization and groups were involved in strengthening the community responses to natural disasters by donating emergency preparedness equipment. They also trained people on steps to take in case of an emergency to minimize casualties and injuries.

The U.N. World Food Programme intervened to provide relief food and other necessities. A disaster causes people to lose their homes, their family members, their food stores. Therefore, the affected people are likely to experience trauma (Miranda, 2014). The role of the altruistic organizations is to help in solving the post-traumatic problems of the affected people and to give them hope in life. The helped by providing food and healthcare services to the victims. They also ensured that the people had basic needs such as clothing and shelter. The organizations then lobbied government help and called upon other people in the community to donate utilities such as blankets, mattress, and money to help the affected.

Barriers to Receiving Health Care Services Related to The Earthquake

One of the main challenges in the Haiti earthquake was the lack of appropriate rescue equipment and lack of sufficient health care facilities. The healthcare available at the scene of the accident had to weigh priorities on who to give the service, given that the number of people affected were higher than the available resources (Sonshine et al., 2012). The healthcare providers faced the dilemma of deciding who to give the priority.

The country also lacked appropriate orthopaedic and surgical services.  When the victims arrived in the hospitals, the available healthcare professionals at the hospital had to take some time to make decisions regarding the severity of the injury, medical history of the victim and medical insurance (Kato & Lee, 2015). A problem arose because the hospital had to follow the stipulated hospital regulations and yet the victims were in urgent need of the healthcare services.

The Role of the Professional Nurse in Providing Health Care Services Related to The Earthquakes in Haiti.

A professional nurse provides various services during a disaster. They provide necessary care and education to the patient. The nurses assisted the patients in gaining understanding and knowledge regarding their health and medications. Nurses also offer firsthand services to the patients until they have fully recovered (Kato & Lee, 2015). A disaster causes not only deaths, but there is even a bigger population which sustains minor and severe injuries. Therefore, professional nurses offer assistance in identifying the severity of the injuries and making decisions, setting goals, and promoting outcomes for a patient.

The nurses are used to determine whether a victim could only depend on first aid service or deserved a specialized care from a hospital. The nurses are also involved in providing care services to the injured even before taking them to the hospital (Miranda, 2014). Their services include sealing the wounds to prevent excessive bleeding depending on a patient’s needs. The nurses maintain the lines of communication with other stakeholders to ensure patient safety. They provide education to the patient on how to handle the wounds and address cultural, psychosocial, developmental, and spiritual needs of the affected population.

Conclusion

A natural disaster represents an adverse event emanating from natural processes that are beyond human control. Examples include floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and other geologic processes (Kato & Lee, 2015). The entire world experiences such disasters and as a result many countries have developed strategic response mechanisms to mitigate their severity. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis are common in various parts of the world and lead to damage of property and cause loss of life. Their severity depends on the affected people’s resilience and infrastructure available to manage the disaster. 

References

Kato, Y., & Lee, J. (2015, December). Effects of Earthquake and Human Migration on Land Cover Change and Mass Wasting from the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts.

Miranda, E. (2014). Lessons Learned from the 2010 Haiti Earthquake for Performance-Based Design. In Performance-Based Seismic Engineering: Vision for an Earthquake Resilient Society (pp. 117-127). Springer Netherlands.

Sonshine, D. B., Caldwell, A., Gosselin, R. A., Born, C. T., & Coughlin, R. R. (2012). Critically assessing the Haiti earthquake response and the barriers to quality orthopaedic care. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research®, 470(10), 2895-2904.

Wex, F., Schryen, G., Feuerriegel, S., & Neumann, D. (2014). Emergency response in natural disaster management: Allocation and scheduling of rescue units. European Journal of Operational Research, 235(3), 697-708.