PAHO: Prepare health systems for ‘very active hurricane season’

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) is urg­ing coun­tries to re­view con­tin­gency plans and ac­ti­vate pre­ven­tive mea­sures to pre­pare health sys­tems for po­ten­tial hur­ri­canes, storms, floods, and oth­er ex­treme weath­er events dur­ing the 2025 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane sea­son that ends on No­vem­ber 30.

“Ex­treme hy­drom­e­te­o­ro­log­i­cal events—such as hur­ri­canes, tor­ren­tial rain­fall and re­sult­ing floods and land­slides—are a con­stant threat to the re­gion, lead­ing to in­juries, loss of life and over­whelm­ing health care sys­tems,” said Leonar­do Her­nan­dez, Head of PA­HO’s Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Unit.

“Ac­ti­vat­ing pre­ven­tive mea­sures to pro­tect peo­ple and health care in­fra­struc­ture pri­or to an ex­treme weath­er event is cru­cial to re­duc­ing their im­pact, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the health of vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties,” he added.

PA­HO said be­yond the phys­i­cal im­pact and in­fra­struc­ture dam­age which of­ten dis­rupts ac­cess to and avail­abil­i­ty of es­sen­tial ser­vices, the health con­se­quences of ex­treme weath­er events al­so in­clude in­creased risks of wa­ter-borne dis­eases, such as di­ar­rhea or cholera, vec­tor-borne dis­eases, such as dengue and Chikun­gun­ya, and res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases, among oth­ers.

Ex­perts say the out­look for the 2025 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane sea­son pre­dicts a 60 per cent chance of an above-nor­mal sea­son, with a range of 13–19 named storms. Of these, six to 10 are fore­cast to be­come hur­ri­canes with winds of 74 miles per hour (mph)or high­er, in­clud­ing three to five ma­jor hur­ri­canes with winds of 111 mph or high­er.

PA­HO said that the 2024 hur­ri­cane sea­son was al­ready high­ly de­struc­tive and caused some of the great­est eco­nom­ic loss­es on record. It in­clud­ed 18 named storms, among them sev­en trop­i­cal storms and 11 hur­ri­canes, five of which were ma­jor. The sea­son saw sev­er­al Cat­e­go­ry 5 hur­ri­canes, in­clud­ing Hur­ri­cane Beryl, which formed in June and be­came the ear­li­est Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm ever record­ed.

PA­HO said to help coun­tries of the Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean pre­pare for this year’s hur­ri­cane sea­son, it is hold­ing a readi­ness vir­tu­al meet­ing on June 10, which will pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Min­istries of Health and civ­il pro­tec­tion agen­cies to ex­change ex­pe­ri­ences with ex­perts in dis­as­ter re­sponse and pub­lic health in emer­gen­cies.

PA­HO said it will al­so con­tin­ue to work with coun­tries to en­sure that na­tion­al emer­gency re­sponse plans are up­dat­ed, and to strength­en in­ter­sec­toral co­or­di­na­tion mech­a­nisms at both na­tion­al and lo­cal lev­els to pro­vide a time­ly and ef­fec­tive re­sponse in line with fu­ture emer­gency alerts. —WASH­ING­TON, D.C. (CMC)